As a thank you to the communities for their loyal support of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, on Friday 25 May and Friday 1 June 2012, residents of Whitby, Pickering, Levisham, Goathland and Grosmont are invited to enjoy a day out on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway for free. This is a pre-booked service only and will be limited to two people per booking.

Places are limited to 30 visitors from each of the 5 stations on the 24 mile line per service. Please call 01751 472508 to book in advance.

In order to collect your tickets, please arrive at your local booking office no later than 15 minutes prior to departure. A valid driving licence or utility bill must be shown with a valid Pickering, Levisham, Goathland, Grosmont or Whitby address.

Don’t forget the Swinging Sixties returns to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on 9 and 10 June with live bands, real ale bars and vintage vehicles at stations along the line. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway will be running an enhanced timetable during the Diamond Jubilee Steam Festival Saturday 2 to Sunday 10 June, with more services running to and from Whitby since the 1950s.

Services run daily between Pickering and Whitby. Fares are £22.50 for adults, £19.50 for seniors and £11.30 for children for a day rover ticket allowing unlimited travel between Pickering and Whitby. A family ticket (two adults and up to four children) is available for just £45.00. Children under five ride free.

For more information, please call 01751 472508, visit www.nymr.co.uk or follow us on Twitter @NYMR or Facebook @North Yorkshire Moors Railway

Residents Festival bookable services

11.00 Whitby to Pickering

11.30 Grosmont to Pickering

11.50 Goathland to Pickering

12.20 Levisham to Pickering

Returning back to Whitby on 15.00 from Pickering (change at Grosmont)

09.00 Pickering to Whitby

09.19 Levisham to Whitby

09.45 Goathland to Whitby

10.10 Grosmont to Whitby

12.00 Pickering to Whitby

12.20 Levisham to Whitby

12.50 Goathland to Whitby

13.10 Grosmont to Whitby

Returning back to Pickering on the 14.00 or 17.30 from Whitby

“My name is Lizzie and I am a rescue greyhound. Although I am nearly 5 years old, I’m in my prime and love to run around and play with my toys. Actually, when I first retired from my racing career, I didn’t know what play was, as after all I had been a working girl.   Not long after I was adopted, my parents and friends gave me lots of toys. I discovered the delights of play, especially with the squeaky ones.   After a life spent chasing but never catching the hare, I can now catch and shake stuffed rabbits to my heart’s content.

Mum, Dad and I are volunteers for the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, based at Grosmont, working in the booking office.   Although I was a bit nervous at first, all that hissing and hooting took a while to get used to, but now I love steam trains.   Not so long ago, I went for a ride and of course and I felt so grand.

Anyway, this is a typical day’s work for me and my parents.

We get there at least 3/4 hour before we have to open so that everything is ready for the passengers.  While my parents check the float, the tickets and do the banking, I stay in my car boot where I am warm and comfortable, so I doze.   Strange as it may seem for an athlete, I do like to sleep a lot.   After all, if nothing is going on or there is no food, sleep seems the most sensible option. But I’m always ready for a walk and amuse my parents by running round in circles out of excitement.   It’s rather nice changing from a lady who launches at the start of a race to a lady who lunches all the time. Dog joke there.

When the Travelling Ticket Inspectors (TTIs) have been to collect their bits and pieces, because Mum and Dad are both fully trained booking office clerks, one of them will collect me, take me for a walk then take me back to the booking office, where I have a bed in the corner out of everyone’s way.   I have a bowl of water and they talk to me if they are not too busy.   I also like to see the nice people who work at the station, such as Peter, Dave, Amanda and Gillian. Sometimes I’m given a snack, but for some reason I’m only given a delicious pig’s ear at home. Something about the honk, according to Dad, but I’ve never noticed.   Of course,  I do all the hard work while all they do is serve the passengers and answer any queries they might have. Everything seems to run like clockwork when I’m on duty!   Lots of passengers have dogs and I love hearing my parents talking about doggy things with the proud owners.  The best bit is when I’m introduced to other dogs, especially greyhounds. We sniff each other thoroughly, eat a few treats, then it’s back for another good old sniff.

At lunch time they get their lunch from the Tea Rooms (they do a lovely sausage at Grosmont!) and I get given a lovely juicy Jumbone.   After lunch one  of them will take me for a walk where I carry out my ablutions and sniff the hedges and grass.   Before we leave for the day, I am taken back to my car boot, then they clean up the booking office, sweeping and washing the floor, so that it is nice and clean, not that I make any mess of course!

When we get home I get given my dinner, which I’m ready for after a hard day’s work, then I’m upstairs to their (I mean my) bed for a few hours of sleep, when I dream of being back at the Station with all my new friends”.  Lizzie

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is very proud of its Volunteers and we are very welcoming of well behaved Dogs to travel with us.

If you would like to become a volunteer for the Railway or you know someone who maybe interested please visit our Volunteering Site which has a wealth of information about this fascinating aspect of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

I HAVE just enjoyed one of the most thrilling experiences of my life.

My daughter, Natalya, organised a footplate ride for my 57th birthday.

Now I am not a person who is usually envious by nature, but I must admit to having being rather ‘green’ when Natalya enjoyed an exhilarating footplate ride on the NYMR earlier this year and subsequently wrote a captivating feature about it for the Gazette and Herald and The Press.

In fact, I had hoped to celebrate my 50th birthday by riding the footplate, but because of work commitments, was unable to do so.

Well, it was certainly worth the seven year wait.

As we drove over the moors from York to Grosmont to join the train leaving for Pickering at 11.30am, I was so excited that I could scarcely contain myself.

On arrival at Grosmont Station, we collected my special yellow driving cab pass from the control office, where we received a very warm welcome from the staff. The platform was very busy with smiling passengers hurrying to climb aboard the waiting train and I noticed how neat and well-kept the station was and thought how proud my Dad, founder Tom Salmon, would be when I told him.

I was then introduced to the friendly crew of the driving cab: driver Shawn Kay, fireman Pete Shaw and trainee fireman Jack Prince.

At last, I eagerly scrambled aboard the footplate of Southern Region locomotive 825 in anticipation of the 18-mile journey from Grosmont to Pickering – a journey I had already done numerous times, but always inside a carriage behind the engine.

Shawn made sure that I was safe and comfortable and lent me a cap to tuck my hair into, before Pete instructed Jack to shovel the largest chunks of coal I had ever seen into the firebox to set the wheels of this huge machine in motion.

As we waved a cheery farewell to the onlookers at the level-crossing, we were immediately over the Murk Esk bridge and into the tunnel adjacent to George Stephenson’s original railway.

Memories of early childhood holidays in Yorkshire came flooding back, as I remembered being in the carriage of a steam-hauled train with my parents and younger sister going through Grosmont tunnel, in the days of British Railways before Beeching wielded his axe on the branch lines which criss-crossed our countryside.

I recollected smartly-dressed passengers hastily getting out of their seats to shut the windows before the acrid sooty fumes could enter the carriage and pondered how times have changed and how we now love the nostalgia of the days of steam, and how a ride on the footplate of a steam engine epitomises the very stuff of dreams.

We quickly emerged from the tunnel into bright sunlight and I soon had a lovely view of Esk Valley’s row of cottages with livestock in the back gardens to our right. Shawn told me that he is ‘the most junior driver on the NYMR’, as he qualified last year after eight years training. He went on to explain just how much effort is required on the part of these giant ’iron horses’, powered by steam, to haul their sets of coaches up the three-and-a-half mile incline to Goathland, with its gradient of 1 in 49.

As I peered through the windows of the front of the cab, I had an entirely different perspective of how steeply the incline rose in front of us.

Jack was under instruction from Pete to double the amount of coal he was shovelling into the firebox, to feed its now insatiable appetite.

Meanwhile, the view from the footplate provided a stunning vista of the steeply wooded slopes around Beckhole and Darnholm, with their soft green colours and a clear view of the recently renewed bridge no 30.

After toiling up the seemingly never-ending incline, we chugged into picturesque Goathland Station, to be greeted by enthusiastic crowds of onlookers and passengers jostling to board the train.

I watched as Jack received a lesson on how to give the passing-loop to an outstretched arm in smart NYMR uniform held aloft in attentive anticipation from the platform below us.

Two children in a carriage of the train alongside us heading for Grosmont gazed wistfully up at me and returned the smile and wave that I gave them before we left in opposite directions.

As we pulled out of Goathland Station behind a good head of steam in the direction of Moorgates, I felt quite overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the surroundings, evoking different aspects of nature.

From my vantage point high upon the footplate, I could enjoy a truly multi-sensory experience: the wind blowing in my face and the warm sunshine with white clouds occasionally scudding across the blue sky above, while down below us primroses, celandines and wood-anemones adorned the grassy banks alongside the track. I spotted newborn calves in the meadows and lambs scampering up the hillsides at the sound of the approaching train, their tails bobbing up and down.

Then onward we hastened towards Ellerbeck and the point at which the Lyke Wake Walk crosses over the track, the wild moorland stretching beyond our horizon into the distance. As the engine curved round a bend into Fen Bog, I glanced back at the train snaking along behind us and recognised Natalya’s beaming face, peering out of a window, camera in hand, as she captured the moment for posterity of her Mum’s long-awaited footplate ride on the NYMR.

The water glistened in the beck below us as I discerned the sweet scent of Newton Dale’s pine forest ahead of us and some men cutting timber waved to us, as we broke the silence of dense tall dark green trees.

I thought of my parents, Tom and Erika Salmon – NYMR members one and two - with gratitude for all the hard work that they did to save this glorious railway, as we journeyed on to Levisham through this, their favourite part of the line.

I was delighted when Shawn invited me to blow the engine’s whistle near Platelayer’s Cottage and again as we neared our journey’s end at Pickering.

As we drew into Pickering Station, I was very impressed by the wonderful reconstruction of the engine shed roof – it was so much more impressive viewed from the footplate of the locomotive which had brought me on this trip of a lifetime.

As a final word, I would like to say ‘thank you’ to all those who made this footplate trip on my beloved NYMR possible for me.

Saturday 2^nd to Sunday 10^th June 2012

To download the timetable, click here

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway will be offering the most intensive steam service for over half a century between Whitby and Pickering from Saturday 2^nd – Sunday 10^th June 2012. The normal Middlesbrough to Whitby service can’t run because four bridges are being replaced on the Esk Valley Line. So the NYMR is taking this opportunity to run a more frequent service into the seaside town instead.

And there’s no better way of starting – and finishing – your day by the sea than with a ride behind one of our historic steam locomotives. There will be a train every two hours from Pickering and Whitby. So instead of fighting for a parking space in the town, visitors can enjoy a steam train ride into the heart of North York Moors, and let our trains take the strain.

From Saturday 2^nd to Sunday 10^th June trains will depart from Whitby every two hours from 10am until 6pm and from Pickering departing 10am until 4pm calling at Levisham, Newtondale Halt, Goathland and Grosmont.

There will also be an hourly service between Pickering and Grosmont every day during this Diamond Jubilee Steam Festival. To accommodate the extra services from Whitby, the 09:00 departure from Pickering will only go as far as Grosmont and the 11:00 departure from Whitby is replaced by the 10:00 and 12:00 services.

“When we heard that Northern Rail’s service couldn’t run, we decided to take the opportunity to run more of our highly popular steam trains during this holiday week.” Explains General Manager Philip Benham “We think everyone’s a winner here because not only do you get the chance to ride behind a steam engine, but we’ll drop you right by the harbour side in the middle of Whitby.”

As a thank you to the communities for their loyal support on Friday 25 May and Friday 1 June all Pickering, Levisham, Goathland, Grosmont and Whitby residents are being invited to enjoy a day out on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway for free. This is a pre-booked only service please call 01751 472 508 to book in advance. In order to collect tickets a valid driving licence or utility bill must be shown with a Pickering, Levisham, Goathland, Grosmont or Whitby address.”

Don’t forget the Swinging Sixties returns to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on Saturday 9 and 10June with live bands, real ale bars and vintage vehicles at stations along the line.

Service runs daily throughout the school half term between Pickering and Whitby. Fares are £22.50 for adults, £19.50 for seniors and £11.30 for children for a day rover ticket allowing unlimited travel between Pickering and Whitby.  A family ticket (two adults and up to four children) is available for just £45.00. Children under five ride free.

For more information, please call 01751 472508, visit www.nymr.co.uk or follow us on Twitter @NYMR or Facebook @North Yorkshire Moors Railway

We has last minute availability week commencing Saturday 16th June 2012. Special offer was £745 NOW: £695.00

Price includes bedding and towels plus rail travel on NYMR services for all guests and a small ‘Wecome’ pack.

Fully fitted and equipped kitchen with microwave and dishwasher. The master bedroom has a feature antique effect king size metal bed. Secondary bedroom has antique pine king size and single beds. Living Room has TV/DVD installed. Bathroom is equipped with wc, handbasin, full bath and separate shower cubicle. Heating is oil fired.

Grosmont Station is on the mainline rail network – why not arrive by the National Network Train to start your holiday?

To book call 01751 472508 or email info@nymr.co.uk

While these two classic A4s race up and down the line, Chris is trying to paint them in time for the end of the gala. The picture combines two of Chris’s most popular railway subjects – the elegant A4 streamliner and the signal box interior with all the levers, this time at Grosmont.

Each day he’s posting a picture outside his Levisham studio of that day’s work so visitors can watch this locomotive race unfold. You can follow the painting’s progress by visiting Levisham Station or on his website ‘Latest News’.

You can purchase your ticket using our easy to use online booking system and have them delivered directly to your door!

Click here to save 20% and visit the World’s most popular Heritage Railway!

* Tickets purchased less than 7 days from the day of travel will be available for collection from Pickering Customer Services Office. If you wish to pick up your tickets from another station, please email info@nymr.co.uk to let them know where you would like to collect them.