A NEW railway platform was opened this weekend which has re-established a long-lost rail link between Northallerton and the Yorkshire Dales.

The temporary new platform at Northallerton West was created as part of a £51,000 project to link the town with Wensleydale Railway.

The official opening ceremony took place on the platform on Saturday (November 22), before the first train transported members of the public and invited guests on an inaugural train ride to the dales.

The new stop means commuters and visitors can now travel 22 miles between Northallerton and Redmire in the Yorkshire Dales and reinstates a service that has been missing for more than 60 years, since the Wensleydale Railway lost its passenger service in 1954.

The new Northallerton West platform is approximately one mile, or a15 minute walk away from Northallerton’s main station and also creates a new link to East Coast Main Line services for passengers.

The Wensleydale Railway Association (WRA) hopes the platform will bring it a step closer to getting a permanent station near to the Northallerton mainline station.

They have also opened up Scruton Station as an intermediate stop between Northallerton and Leeming Bar. It closed to the public on April 26, 1954 and reopened on the anniversary of its closure this year, having been returned to the way it looked 60 years ago. Even the original paint from the era was painstakingly replicated.

The railway is run mostly by volunteers and has raised the cost of creating the Northallerton link itself, helped largely with a £40,000 grant from Hambleton District Council to the Wensleydale Railway project.