Close to £1 million had been spent on building the Queensbury lines, and it is doubtful if the expenditure was ever really justified. Advantages of the Bradford–Halifax section were to a considerable extent nullified by the 1882 GNR–L&YR agreement, while the Bradford–Keighley route was too steeply graded to compete with the Midland's low-lying line along the Aire Valley. At first the GNR provided the fastest service from Keighley to London in 4 hours 55 minutes by a Keighley–Bradford train, stopping only at St Dunstan's to connect with a King's Cross express. A service from Halifax avoided St Dunstan's by using the Leeds curve to connect with London trains at . After a brief heyday the routes settled down to concentrate on purely local traffic, and even this diminished when trams started running from both Bradford and Halifax to Queensbury in 1901. Buses caused a further reduction in traffic in the late 1920s and Sunday trains were withdrawn in December 1938, but by 1946 the service was still surprisingly lavish with one through coach working to King's Cross, running from Halifax to Bradford in 22 minutes. It was only after a survey showed the line was losing £48,000 a year that regular passenger trains were withdrawn on 23 May 1955. All lines west of Horton Park were completely closed by 1965, and those east of this point followed suit in 1972. Queensbury and Lees Moor tunnels were abandoned in 1956 owing to their poor state of repair.