Uppermill High Street will shut completely for 29 hours next spring so Network Rail can tear out and replace the track bed on the 25-metre-high Saddleworth Viaduct, a closure the village’s best-known employer warns will punch a hole in local earnings during the first big tourist weekend of the season.

J W Buckley’s, the family bakery that has traded in the village for more than a century, said the closure from 06:00 Saturday 26 April to 11:00 Sunday 27 April 2025 lands squarely on a bank-holiday weekend that normally keeps its tills ringing. “Because we rely on summer trade and tourists coming into the village, the bank-holiday weekends and weekend in general are our busy times,” owner Graham Scholes said. “With national-insurance and wages going up plus electric costs, we need to get funds in through our retail operation to pay our way. We employ 34 local people who rely on us to provide them with work. Has any impact assessment been made to loss of income when you close the road?”

Network Rail replied that the viaduct work - part of the multi-billion-pound Transpennine Route Upgrade - leaves no safe alternative. “Given the nature of this work, the risk of falling materials from the viaduct means that a full road closure is required to ensure public safety,” the spokesman wrote. “With the viaduct standing at 25 metres in some areas, any debris falling from this height poses a significant hazard.” He said crews have compressed the closure to the “least duration possible” and promised that Buckley’s and other shops may still open their doors, even though vehicles and pedestrians will be barred from the High Street beneath the structure.

The letter also revealed that Oldham Road bridge will be rebuilt in 2028 and the line through Uppermill and Greenfield wired for electrification from 2029 “until the early 2030s”, with detailed timetables still to come.

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