Westward from above Woodhead Tunnel.
View from A628 in 1951, when the ex-Great Central Sheffield (Victoria) - Manchester main line was not only still running, having a New Woodhead Tunnel being built for it , prior to the whole route being electrified. In this view the new tunnel portal is below to left and the new Woodhead Station will be built on this alignment. The new station was opened with the New Tunnel and the initiation of full electrification on 14/6/54, the Old (single-bore) Tunnels and Station being closed simultaneously. Here the main lines disappear towards Manchester (an Up freight blows off in the Up Loop), beside the River Etherow, which leads into the reservoirs down Logdendale.
Woodhead Tunnel and Sheffield (Victoria) - Manchester railway.
Shortly before World War Two, a start was made on the electrification of the LNER main line between Rotherwood Sidings (east of Sheffield Victoria) and from Wath Central via the Worsborough Branch to Penistone and over the Woodhead route to Manchester London Road and other points off the main line including Glossop. The war interrupted the electrification for over 10 years, although the steel standards for the overhead catenary bordered the route over the intervening period.

After the war it was found that the two 3-mile single-line Woodhead Tunnels (now almost 100 years old and traversed latterly by 100 steam trains a day) were almost collapsing and beyond economic repair. Therefore before the electrification could be completed a new much larger double-track tunnel would have to be built, parallel to and on the south side of the old bores. Work began in August 1949 and was completed, along with the electrification (also new stations at Dunford Bridge and Woodhead and a new bridge over the River Etherow at Woodhead) in June 1954. However, the pre-war scheme to electrify the railways through to Manchester Central, the Docks and the Trafford Park industrial area had been abandoned, 'Motorway Madness' ensued, the M62 was built instead and the whole modernised railway was closed down and ripped up (between Hadfield and Penistone) in July 1981!