WORK will soon begin on restoring an abandoned mine railway, which during its Victorian heyday supported a bustling industry in a quiet moors valley.

The North York Moors National Park Authority is to restore part of the former Rosedale Mineral Railway, in the remote and picturesque area of the moors near Pickering, which once delivered ironstone to the region.

The work, which was approved at the park authority’s planning meeting last week, will involve repairing damage caused by a landslip along the route near Rosedale East.

About 35m of the embankment will be excavated and rebuilt and the track bed will be re-established.

It is part of a wider project by the park authority to preserve and highlight the impact industrialisation once had on the North York Moors.

The initiative, This Exploited Land, involves numerous projects around the moors.

Dr Louise Cooke, heritage officer for the This Exploited Land project said: “This approval has enabled us to provide essential repairs to a much-loved route on the old Rosedale railway.”

Further archaeological work will be carried out to sites in the Rosedale area which once supported a thriving mining community.

Other key elements of the This Exploited Land project, which has attracted lottery funding, involve recreating the pre-Victorian ecosystem, identifying wildlife, woodlands and water courses and surveys to find out why people visited the area.

It will also involve training teams of volunteers to conserve 90m-long ironstone kilns built close to the ironstone mines at Rosedale.

Fragile remains of the early development of railways on the moors, which spanned from 1830 to the closure of the Rosedale Railway in 1929 will be charted and conserved.

The line once ran across Farndale and Baysdale moors, linking Rosedale with Danby and beyond the Cleveland Hills to Ferryhill in County Durham.

Dr Cooke said This Exploited Land is a chance to present the story of the area’s landscape for the first time, which were once sites of rapid industrial expansion.

Speaking earlier this year she said: “The area also has a distinctive identity based upon the sense of discovery and the shock of knowing that these now natural places were sites of extraordinary industrial expansion, and just as rapid industrial retraction.

"The feeling of remoteness experienced on the upland moor is challenged by the knowledge that a railway ran high across Farndale and Baysdale moors and linked Rosedale beyond the Cleveland Hills to Ferryhill in County Durham."