TELEVISION celebrity Linda Barker stops off in North Yorkshire in a new BBC arts programme to be aired this weekend.

Linda goes in search of some intriguing stories behind Yorkshire’s hidden paintings in the one-off programme.

In Hidden Paintings Of Yorkshire And Lincolnshire (BBC1, 10.25pm, Sunday) Linda reveals some of the region’s artistic gems.

Linda visits the National Railway Museum in York, host to an enormous collection which tells the story of rail transport and its impact on British society.

The museum has more than 1,000 original paintings that tell the story of the railways and 11,000 travel posters from the years between the wars, the golden age of the train. They feature destinations such as Harrogate, the Yorkshire Dales and the east coast seaside resorts, particularly Scarborough, Bridlington and Skegness.

The paintings are usually stored away from general view, but now there is a unique opportunity to see them. Ed Bartholomew, the NRM’s senior curator of images, shows Linda some stunning examples of railway travel posters from the Thirties.

The museum owns many of the original paintings that featured in them.

One of the most surprising is a painting of Scarborough by the Russian artist Konstantin Gorbatov, with its unusual representation of the town, pictured top right.

It was produced by the London North Eastern Railway to advertise Scarborough and the use of the train.

Lorna Frost, assistant curator of images, shows Linda some of the 11,000 travel posters held in the museum’s collection.

Linda also takes a trip to the coast on board a steam train on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to see how the present-day destinations match up to these romantic portraits of the resorts between the wars.

In Scarborough, Linda hears the story of the East Coast Raids of 1914 when the town was shelled by the German navy and of the famous recruitment poster: Remember Scarborough – Enlist Now.