PART of York’s railway heritage is to be given a new role, four miles across the city.

Planners have approved a scheme to dismantle a 19th century hut which once formed part of the North Eastern Railway operation at West Offices, York’s first station, and relocate it to Murton Park.

Its new home on the edge of the city houses the Yorkshire Museum of Farming and the Derwent Valley Light Railway, and it will be used to teach groups of schoolchildren.

The hut, together with the rest of the West Offices site in Station Rise which is now being transformed into City of York Council’s new headquarters, has listed status. However, S Harrison, the HQ project’s developers, secured an agreement which has allowed it to be switched elsewhere and the council has approved the move.

In a statement, architects Potts Parry Ives and Young, the agents for the proposal, said: “It will be used as a classroom for visiting school parties to both the Yorkshire Museum of Farming and the Derwent Valley Light Railway, along with archive storage for the railway, and will also be available for hire to community groups.

“The building will be carefully re-erected, and within the main room there will be explanatory panels detailing the significance of the building and its history. It will be painted in a traditional North Eastern Railway colour.

“The proposal to relocate it will ensure this example of a standard North Eastern Railway building is not only retained and preserved, but it will also provide useful facilities for both the Museum of Farming and the Light Railway.”

The building is the last survivor of a number of huts built at West Offices in the late 19th and early 20th Century, but has since been altered to become a base for meetings and functions. As it is listed, English Heritage will make a photographic record of it before it is moved.

Both the farming museum and the railway have previously preserved buildings originally located elsewhere at Murton Park, including a signal box from Muston, near Filey, and the former Wheldrake station building.