A MASSIVE visitor boom could be on the way to North Yorkshire with the news that the film of a Harry Potter novel is to be made on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

The railway, which starts at Pickering, will be the setting for scenes from the film adaptation of the first JK Rowling novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

When the latest book in the series was launched last month, children and adults camped outside bookshops to make sure they got a copy.

The huge interest means the film looks set to be a dead-cert box office smash.

When the colour version of The Railway Children was filmed on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in 1970, passenger figures doubled and the railway, then in its embryonic stages, has thrived ever since.

Jane Lethbridge, marketing manager for the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, said: "We hope this will have the same effect on us and I think all the signs are that it will do that."

In another potentially lucrative publicity coup for the railway, scenes from AS Byatt's novel Possession also look set to be filmed at Pickering Station.

Although the film is still in its early stages, it has been linked with stars like Sean Connery and Gwyneth Paltrow - although neither has yet confirmed.

When Harry Potter, the trainee wizard, steps off the Hogwarts Express at Goathland Station this autumn, he could be signalling the beginning of a new phase for the railway.

Although it has been used as a film and television location before, most notably in the Heartbeat series, nothing as big as Harry Potter has ever taken place there.