The
Middleton Junction and Oldham Branch Railway (MJOBR) was opened on 31 March 1842 by the
Manchester and Leeds Railway, whose chief engineer was
George Stephenson. The MJOBR left the
Manchester to
Littleborough railway line (opened on 4 July 1839), at
Middleton Junction (then
Oldham Junction) went through the expanding town of
Chadderton to a station in the lower part of
Oldham named
Werneth. It was part of the original route to Oldham. The Werneth Incline - 1 mile 1,383 yards (3 km) long - was the steepest passenger worked railway line in Britain, with a gradient of 1:27 for about a mile. The earliest trains to use this line required cable assistance to get to the top of the incline.