IT’S full steam ahead for work on a new roof for a heritage railway station.

The roof is part of a £1.5 million regeneration programme at Pickering Station, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, replacing the old roof – which was removed in 1951 – with an exact replica of the original. When the station was built in 1843 it had a roof on, and the architect was G T Andrews from York, along with a Robert Stephenson.

Project manager, Nick Beilby, said: “The railway wants to keep true to the original design and specification. We are putting it back almost exactly the same as it was originally, but this time using steel instead of wrought iron.

“We have had to design it using drawings of similar roofs from stations like Filey.”

Mr Beilby said that once the roof was on it would give much more protection from the elements and opens up the potential and possibilities for holding a variety of new events at the station. It will create more of an auditorium, while enabling the railway to keep some of its precious rolling stock under cover during the winter months.

A new learning centre and visitor centre were completed and opened on Platform Two of the station last year. The aim is to have the roof completed by the end of March, to coincide with the start of the main season.

A feature of the new roof, which measures some 13 metres, wall to wall, will be the use of tiles from a slate mine in North Wales. The cost of the slate tiles for the roof will be £50,000, so the railway launched a Roof Appeal seeking help from the public to raise money for the tiles. Anyone can sponsor a tile at £5 per time, and so far £21,000 has been raised.

Sponsor forms can be picked up from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway appeal office on Park Street in Pickering or go online at thetrainofthought.co.uk