The forgotten train station that vanished – York's hidden railway story

The old railway station, 1910s. This was built in 1841 by G.T. Andrews. Today, the building has been extended to form the city council HQ. Picture: Explore York Libraries and Archives

York's 4 railway stations and the history behind them, by David Wilson

YORK is rightly world-famous for its National Railway Museum, but I was surprised to learn that the city has had no fewer than four successive railway stations.

Initially, there was the wooden structure erected in Queen’s Street in 1839 which served as a temporary station with one platform.

York’s first permanent station was opened just inside the city walls on January 4, 1841. There had been a certain amount of controversy over the siting of this station. Celebrated railway engineer George Stephenson had originally wanted it to be located outside the city walls for logistic and operational reasons. But he was overruled by railway financier and Lord Mayor of York George Hudson who wanted the station to be inside the city walls. Since Hudson was not only Lord Mayor of York but also the largest shareholder and chairman of the York & North Midland Railway, he got his way.

The old railway station, 1910s. This was built in 1841 by G.T. Andrews. Today, the building has been extended to form the city council HQ. Picture: Explore York Libraries and Archives

York’s first permanent railway station was designed by the architect George Townsend Andrews. The main façade looked onto Tanner Row and Toft Green and the station originally had only one floor.

A second floor was added in 1850. The booking hall and parcels office were on the ground floor; more offices and the YNMR boardroom were located on the second storey. There were only two platforms: one for arrivals and one for departures.

You can still see the two arches in the city walls which were designed by Andrews to enable the trains to arrive and leave. Scawin’s railway hotel opened in 1841. In 1852, a new hotel was built on the old station site and two years later was re-named The Royal Station Hotel after Queen Victoria stayed there briefly. Today this site is occupied by the City of York Council’s West Offices.

Former entrance to the 1841 railway station. Photo by David Wilson

The problem with this station was that York was a terminus: trains coming from the south had to reverse out of the station to carry on their journey northwards. With the increase in railway traffic towards the mid-19th century, York was causing bottlenecks on the railway lines. It was time for a new, larger station.

York’s second permanent station was designed by Thomas Elliott Harrison ,a former Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) president. The architects were the North Eastern Railway’s Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, and the station took around five years to build; outside the city walls this time. Building work started in 1872 and in 1877 the present-day station was opened.

The old railway station, 1920s. It occupied a site within the city walls and remained important for many years after the new station was built, remaining as an area for storage of trains and carriages. Picture: Explore York Library and Archives

At its inception it was hailed as the largest railway station in the world, and certainly the largest in Britain. It was to become a Grade II listed building in 1968.

The first train left the new station bound for Scarborough at 5.30am on June 25, 1877. The station shed and railway tracks were built on a curve to navigate the city walls and allow through-traffic so that trains didn’t need to reverse.

The new station had 13 platforms which later expanded to 15, but in 1988-89, these were rationalised down to the present-day 11 platforms in British Rail’s major track and signalling remodelling project which was part of the preparations for the electrification of the line.

York Railway Station photographed by Walter Scott (not that Walter Scott) c1920. Picture: Explore York Libraries and Archives

The second Royal Station Hotel was built alongside the new station and opened on May 20, 1878. In 2024 this hotel was re-named The Milner in honour of William ‘Uncle Billy’ Milner, a heroic World War II foreman at York station who was killed in an air raid while retrieving a first aid kit to help casualties.

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There was a fourth railway station in York. This was the York Layerthorpe station, the northern terminus of the privately owned Derwent Valley Light Railway (DVLR). It opened on July 19,1913 and was located immediately east of the connection to the Foss Islands Branch Line. Regular passenger trains ran from 1913 to 1926 but thereafter it handled mainly freight and local industry traffic. The station closed completely in 1987.

Nowadays, many of us enjoy train travel but back in early Victorian Britain, there was a considerable amount of fear involved in travelling by train.

Early carriages were made of wood, had a stage-coach design and small compartments which were locked from the outside when the train left the station. This meant you could be robbed, attacked or even killed by criminals and psychopaths, not to mention the risk of catching serious diseases from fellow-passengers.

Early Victorian train carriage at the Railway Museum York. Photo by David Wilson

Only first-class carriages were protected from the elements and had comfortable, upholstered seats, glass windows and oil lamps for when it grew dark.

Second-class carriages had wooden seats, with covered roofs, but were sometimes open at the sides and often had no glass in the windows, leaving passengers vulnerable to smoke, soot and bad weather. Third-class carriages were little better than cattle trucks, with no coverings whatsoever.

In the early days, there were many more accidents than there are nowadays. This probably accounts for the general public’s terror of catching ‘railway spine’ (also known as Erichsen’s disease). This was initially thought of as a physical injury and prompted bitter legal debates as injured passengers sued railway companies for financial compensation. Decades later, it was understood to be more of a psychological trauma akin to PTSD.

We’ve certainly come a long way from the heady days of early train travel in terms of speed, safety and comfort.

David Wilson is a community writer with The Press