In the short term it would be better to extend the Clitheroe service to Hellifield and change there which would shorten the journey times from the Skipton line and give an indication of possible demand to/from Blackburn and stations towards Manchester.
That would need rolling stock but no major track investment to start with - though ideally a bay platform would be reinstated at Hellifield which would also allow reversal to Skipton if needed.
I believe under the proposed Northern timetable next year (as per the northern timetable thread) there is generally an hourly Leeds-Skipton -Hellifield service for a lot of the day - running either to Morecambe or Carlisle so hopefully the timetabling could provide a reliable connection without having to wait too long.
Perhaps it would be a better idea if the Clitheroe service could augment these and run to Ribblehead (or beyond) in the hours there isn't a Leeds train to give a through service from Manchester/Bolton areas.
This is exactly what I was thinking much more deliverable option - which probably has a reasonable chance of happening if persued.
What would be the point of a service that starts and terminates at Hellified?
I don't see any money forthcoming for new stations at Chatburn or Gisburn and I can think of a huge number of more useful new station locations. Hellifield itself is not particularly big, and adding in a connection will probably not make it a very attractive prospect vs changing at Leeds, plus reduce any journey time saving (going via Entwistle is very slow). One could propose a though service to Settle if there were a new crossover installed, of course, but then why provide an extra train to Settle that doesn't at least go to Skipton? I love the idea of a regular Clitheroe to Hellifield service - but I'm just not sure what we would be achieving with it.
My view of Skipton to Colne is this. The DfT should have written into the franchise agreement for Northern to provide a service - but not that it has to be a rail service. Leave it up to the franchisee to decide if they would like to buy their own buses and employ drivers, contract their service to a local coach company, or see if they can do a deal with Transdev to have them accept their passengers and amend the routes slightly so that the buses stop in a suitable place for the station.
Northern could then make tickets available and hey presto you have linked the two lines without spending any new money on infrastructure at all. If somebody wants to travel from Nelso to Leeds they can put that into any website (even trainline) and it will show them that they can get a train to Colne, a bus to Skipton and a train to Leeds, and they can buy one through ticket with no supplements, no extras and no confusion. It would also be good for passengers because it would mean that if someone bought a Preston to Leeds ticket they could have the oppourtunity to go via Colne without paying any extra, which would be very useful in times of disruption or engineering work, or if there were a gap in the timetable which meant this was quicker.
The Leuchars bus link operates much like this using Stagecoach East Scotland and it works quite well, Scotrail run a booking office in the bus station at St Andrews.
This is also a solution I would advocate for Uckfield to Lewes, which if anything probably has a stronger case than this one. I think the DfT could do with being a bit more ambitious on 'double ended' bus links. I would guess they are a bit concerned it might increase bid costs disproportionately though. One way or the other, doing
something to try to increase ridership on the branch one way or the other is probably important to securing its long term future.