The Lost Stations of York 

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After ten minutes I now know more about York's railway stations than I learned in my first 61-plus years. Thanks, RLR.

The problem is with most of the closures , especially the Beeching ones , at the time yeah they probably were not required . However now probably three-quarters of those lines that were closed are now desperately needed as commuter lines to take traffic off the roads . That whole period in the 1960s really just shows the shortsightedness of the existing government . So many of those old lines have now been re-constituted as tramways or in some cases guided bus ways

Bone cracking flu, out on my a**e...what to do...REDISCOVERING LOST RAILWAYS UPLOAD!!! A beacon of hope in the morass of my self pity! Thank you sir!

I learned about the original terminus inside the walls, because I was working for the council when they moved into it. It's a shame you didn't get to look inside the offices, there are some really nice features, such as exterior walls (complete with drainpipes) inside, as the original buildings formed a horseshoe around the platforms, and where the platforms were is now infilled as open-plan office space, but the original buildings house meeting rooms around the outside.

Simple brilliant. Thank you

My brother and I as kids spent hours playing in York station, we had to buy a platform ticket in those days.

I was posted to RAF Staxton Wold in 1966 and we visited York regularly; the old station was in use as museum then, a bit cramped and nothing like the variety of stock that the current one has. Later I worked at the Agricultural College and visited Layerthorpe for supplies; the Derwent Valley Railway was still extant then and ran occasional specials. Happy days!

Absolutely fascinating.

I was born and still live in a York, The Derwent Valley Light Railway ran behind my parents house we used to watch the trains going past from when the goods wagons were pulled by Steam locos up until the mid 60s when diesel shutters were used. I remember the level crossing at New Earswick and the DMUs at Rowntree Halt, sadly as most of us do we take things for granted expecting the railways to always be there. I had a camera in those days but never thought to capture the everyday railway activity. Great video by the way👍🏻

Your videos are breathtakingly good 👍 So evocative, and so well researched.

As soon as I saw this upload to RU-vid I was watching it, one of the best researchers and disused railways RU-vid channels out there, always a joy, keep up the amazing work as always

Thank you for another informative and interesting video. Dreadfully sad that some of these lovely station buildings are no more. Shame on the developers and planners. Beautifully produced and narrated as usual.

I often wish I'd been born 20 years before I was, so that I could have explored so many branch line stations that were lost to the Beeching cull.

In these modern times with growing, busy populations its more than likely that those featured stations would now be a welcome godsend in the needs for public transportation! Nice feature indeed!!

I remember Rowntree Halt, Layerthorpe and Dunnington being open. Not York - but I remember getting off the once a day stop at Melton Halt near Hull.

Another fact packed video. Visited the city last year, wish I had seen this before I went. Thank you.

Very professionally done! Well done on another great video. Also well done for keeping the railway history alive.

Really enjoying your films ~ Subscribed & Spreading on Facebook 🚂☁️☁️☁️

Nice video of these lost stations. I would ask if you could add a map with the location of the stations for future videos. It could add some perspective of the areas of the cities that would have benefited from them.

I love your narrative voice! Truly TV quality production!

Another masterpiece. I look forward to all your amazing videos coming out

Thank you for another wonderful video. I always look forward to your work.

I'm from York so found this extremely enjoyable, thank you! As for the question at the end, I'd love to see us get more stations as currently we heavily rely on other forms of transport to get us to the station in the first place before even getting a train. It's nice that Poppleton station stayed open, but others like Copmanthorpe (on the ECML about 4 miles south of York station) and Haxby would benefit the local areas it would serve; the latter so much that they're starting work on building a new station there right now. It is annoying that I live a 5 minute walk from the railway, but a 25 minute walk to the station, but we have a decent bus service and most routes go to the station anyway so I think it'll stay a dream for now.

Interesting video and great camera woork! New subscriber. Greetings from Italy. Stefano

Excellent and enjoyable as always. A pleasure to watch. 👏🙂

This is another enjoyable film from your channel. Great video.

Thank you once more

I finally got the chance to watch your new video 😎 I must say your work is well put together and really interesting too. So I would like to say Many thanks for sharing 👏🏻 All the best 🤗🍻👍🏻

I lived in york from 1976 to 1979. I knew about the original York station within the city walls but knew,a little about the others. Excellent video, well made, full of historical facts and information.

I'm a train and I approve this video!.

Excellent video, thank you! I hope to visit York once in the future 👍😊

Happy to see an upload from you! 😃

Excellent as always

Brilliant video, many thanks.

extremely well done and very interesting-you should do a similar video on Swansea's lost city centre stations ,which at one time had seven stations

Excellent video. Full of factual information and well illustrated with old photos. So good to watch and learn from. Thank you.

Fantastic another great video

I've made many visits to York over the years, but didn't have an inkling about these old stations. And I call myself a railway enthusiast! As mentioned elsewhere, a map please. Thanks for the video, utterly brilliant.

i don't know why, but i feel like your quality of editing has become so much more wonderfully dynamic, like you've stepped up you're game (i don't know if that's the case, but OH MY GOD IS IT GOOD). great work, as per usual!

What an amazing video, thanks for that.

Really enjoyable. Thank you.

Your videos are an oasis of calm in my life. I would love to buy you a beer. As always, thank you.

Great video though I was surprised you didn't give a little shout to the old station offices building that still stands as The Grand Hotel. Very beautiful building.

may have been a short video.... but an was it packed with information and i loved every minute of it.... great work keep it up

Thank you for yet another throughly researched, well narrated, interesting and informative programme. While the circumstances that gave birth to these stations have, undoubtedly, changed over decades, and it might be difficult to justify their existence nowadays, there must surely be merit in protecting the buildings that contributed to the rich architectural heritage that our railways have given us. Thankfully, our railway heritage generally is well served in York, thanks to the museum!

Very intersting video, being born in earswick I can remember seeing the trains passing by from our back garden as a small child. We moved away when i was about 6 years old but often came back to visit our grandparents who also lived in Earswick it was sad to see the station slowly detiorate and then disappear. I also remember the other york station inside the town walls when it was used as carriage sidings.

Great video! Perhaps a bit far out from the city centre for you to have covered, but there were additional stations on the Scarborough line at Haxby and Strensall. It’s looking likely that a new station will be built at Haxby which is great news!

Always enjoy your videos. Far too long between them so I always start watching them all again from the start. And you have a great speaking voice for it (some people just have the gift of sounding calm and informative) that makes it easy to watch (hate those that use computer generated AI voices - can never sit through them). Always wanted to stay at the Royal York hotel attached.

Excellent as usual , if these stations were open today it may ease some of the horrendous grid-lock traffic York sees at rush hour ,several rumours about re-opening the York-Bev' route ,Haxby station etc' but we shall see , final point Rowntree Halt station name board resides in the NRM

Thank you for another fascinating tour through history. I have long loved York, but really only new about the huge arch being punched through the city walls.

Very informative. Thanks!

As an New Earswick Lad I well remember the steam trains goods and passenger passing through Earswick Station. My uncle started his railway career at Earswick

As always, a very interesting video.

Tough question I live in Cheltenham it too has a lot of lost railway stations even in the villages Andoversford and Bishops Cleeve aswell as Cleeve (Stoke Orchard)!

Brilliant video

Really enjoyed that thanks

Once again an excellent film! I cannot comment on the closures as I am not familiar with the local circumstances, but suspect the motives were not always completely transparent. I wish you a Happy Xmas and look forward to next year's interesting videos. Mike

Excellent thanks

These are getting better and better. Great little history lesson. I know York well but had no idea there was a station inside the walls.

subscribed :) This is definitely one that couldn't be reopened ! Too much in the way now.

Excellent doccumentry. I lived in York for many years until recently and did not know about all that shown here. I do remember seeing the diesel locos operating in front of Rowntrees. I believe at least one of them is now in preservation.

Oh wow thank you!

There’s a lovely photo of Holgate Station (the platform used by race-goers to reduce walking distance to the Racecourse) in The Fox pub at the road junction of Holgate Road and Acomb Road. Some of the decor inside echoes this era; leather suitcases on luggage racks mounted on the wall in one of the pub’s ‘compartments’, for example.

How amazing!! I Booked my trip to London today!! I will arrive in June and plan to visit York!! I would love to meet you in person also!

Nice to see the old steam trains and old stations

Well researched and very interesting. As a child I remember a single class 20 working the Foss Islands branch to the coal drops that I believe is where the current Waitrose supermarket stands.

great vid

Excellent. I was born in York but knew very little of this history. Thanks

Having lived and worked in York all my life it was nice to see the old Stations and track great video, Thank you. There is an old line that was taken away in the 1980s after closing to passenger traffic 10 plus years previously between Grimsby, Louth and London, I believe it was known as the fast Fish line, could make London in 2 hours back in the day. Well worth looking at?

Nice to see you in my neck of the woods! Great stuff, I knew about the original station, but not the temporary one!

aNOTHER BRILLANT AND AMAZING VIDEO

never even knew the present station replaced 1 before it or a wooden one or even a racecourse one

Your doing well mate, your doing very well.

Good video, I holiday around York, never knew about most of these stations. I knew there was the old York station but not exactly where it was. Interesting about the other stations. Weird about the racecourse one, I regularly go to Kempton Park racecourse for motobike autojumbles and it still has its station, although Surbiton is less than half a mile away, I would have said Kempton is a smaller racecourse than York.

Thank you I found this really interesting. Now subscribed.

Thanks for this, really informative, I never knew there were that many disused stations around York. I’m not from the area myself but after this video I know it better now.

I greatly enjoyed this wonderfully observed journey through York's lost stations. Perhaps some of the former trackbeds, if accessible, merit further investigation.

I found this interesting as I worked at BR Eastern Region HQ after leaving school in 1972 until 1987. For some years, along with many other people, I kept a bike on the former terminus station. The tracks to it were cleared prior to the construction of Hudson House when the former North Eastern and Eastern regions of BR were merged in 1967. Many of the former railway offices have now been converted into luxury hotels or flats, such is the transformation of York over recent times. By the way, the walls around the city are called the Bar Walls, not the "City Walls" and you also referred to Tanner Row by an incorrect name. I regret that I never rode on the Rowntrees train, I guess I took it for granted like we always took KitKat and Yorkie bars as a fixture of the city!

It's a big thumbs up from me, and I know a bit about York.

Great video. I would have liked mention of the closed stations along the Scarborough line, for example the maybe to be reopened Haxby station and Stensall. There is also merit in looking at some of the other lines which radiated from the “new” York station - which is why it has so many unused bay platforms - like the Pocklington, Beverley and Hull line and, of course, the original East Cost Mainline via the Naburn and Selby swing bridges (both still there) and much of which can be walked from Tesco at Tadcaser Road at least as far as Riccall. That line closed partly to avoid delays at the bridges and partly to bypass subsidence at the Selby coalfield, can still be traced by the curve round the Tesco car park.

When a student I worked in Rowntrees emptying the waggons of returned chocs inside the factory itself. Little electric shunters pulled them in and out.

There are plans to re-open the Earswick (New Earswick) Station, although not on the original site as that land has been redeveloped.

Alas, my home city is being strangled in two ways - by the motor vehicle and by those that wage war against the motor vehicle. Whilst York can't cope with the traffic, the current local administration are trying to close cut-throughs which push more traffic onto already very busy arterial roads. Common sense would suggest opening of stations at Haxby, Strensall - maybe a combined Parkway station would work (two stations that were not mentioned on this film), an opening of a station at Copmanthorpe and maybe at Tesco Askham Bar. There could also be wisdom in opening one at the former British Sugar site, seeing that there are houses due to be built there.

You can argue the toss about closures all night long and still not get a consensus! What many of your excellent and knowledgeable productions reveal is the number of closures made pre-Beeching - and many going back to the period between the two World Wars. As I have said to you previously on this subject, it is often not a case of whether or not a particular line should have been closed - more a questions as to whether it should ever have been built in the first place! If only we could lay a standard gauge line down as quick as we can roll out a Model Rail Layout! So many where a good idea in the moment - but by the time several years later when construction was complete the business proposition (if it had ever really existed in the first place) was gone!

Would be also nice to know that another station that was called Haxby , will be getting rebuilt (in a different location) in the next few years as well

Fpr one moment, I thought you were going to say Osbaldwick was home to a TARDIS!

The Derwent valley railway actually kept the foss islands connection going long after foss islands itself closed. Its worth remembering as one of the very few lines that avoided both the regrouping and nationalisation.

Well researched and nicely presented as others below have already said. Locations plan almost superfluous this time. No mention of Mr Hudson .

Railway closures were happening before Dr Beeching who did some good and was working under the dictate from the government but now the A’s closure programme of the 60/70s has in hindsight was catastrophic for uk ,ie if live in Harrogate ,no trains to Ripon and onwards ,line to Wetherby and on to Leeds,the line to Otley from Arthington and onward ,it’s easy to rip a line up but try re opening very exspensive, but the same through the whole of uk ,barmy ,bonkers ect!

There is now discussions around a new station at Haxby

Re-instating the Derwent Valley Line and creating a Heritage service to the York Museum would be a great tourist attraction, but an even greater headache for Network Rail!

I like York. I’ve been to York 5 times and the station is magnificent.

Hi Nice review, They should never have closed any of these lines, ( Like in Devon they are bringing back the lost lines) All the Best Brian

I remember working for a cleaning company that was based in the building where west offices now are,I used to go in the back gate,where the crossing is now at the bottom of Queen st bridge,then walk along the old platform to get to work.There is still a lot to see of the old station at west office,but only if you work for the council sadly.

Great film, I believe there have been various proposals over the years to reopen the York to Beverley line, it should not have been closed, direct link to Hull. Would you be able to make a film about the Cross Gates, Wetherby, Harrogate to Ripon and Northallerton line sometime in the future please?

The halfway point between London & Edinburgh is outside the old Kirkstall Forge on Kirkstall Road in Leeds. Where there is a stone obelisk 200 miles each way 1:00. Fascinating I remember Terry's and Rowntrees being bought out, by Nestles and Suchard. Shame HOABL

If you had travelled a touch further you would have reach the only piece of operating line at Murton on the DVLR . But it’s a great insight into york

Any of the cricket pavilion station buildings have been saved? They are pretty 🎉

excellent video 👍no they should have remain this is part of our heritage i am sure they would have played a part of Yorks railway