A CHARITY which is restoring a disused Victorian railway station is searching for the original clock which used to hang above the platform.

The Richmond Station Trust, in North Yorkshire, believes the clock was sold in the late 1960s, when the station closed, to a buyer at Stapleton, near Darlington.

Donald Cline, who is leading the conversion of the station into a community and commercial centre, hopes that the timepiece can be restored to its original place as a feature of the development.

Local railway historian John Young said that a mechanical clock would have been installed when the station opened in 1847, but would have later been converted to electricity. Mr Cline said evidence of cabling was uncovered during restoration work.

"When the National Railway Board decommissioned Richmond station in 1969, the fittings and fixtures were removed and we believe that many of them were sold at auction locally," said Mr Cline.

"Apparently, at the time, railway items weren't seen as collectable like they are now, so the clock wouldn't have fetched very much money.

"Two people have told us that someone from Stapleton acquired the clock, but who was it, are they still there and do they still have it?"

A spokesman for the National Railway Museum, at York, said that the original clock would not have been standard issue.

"There weren't really such things as standard clocks at that time," he said. "The railway company would specify what it wanted from a local clock maker. The Richmond station clock was probably made by one of the Barnard Castle makers."

Railway fittings sold in the 1960s were traded through an organisation called Collectors' Corner, which no longer operates, he said.

In his search for the clock, Mr Cline contacted retired building company boss Sir William McAlpine, chairman of the Railway Heritage Trust, who was unable to help. Sir William visited Richmond station two years ago during fund raising for the restoration.

The Richmond station trustees will donate surplus platform plinths to the North York Moors steam railway, which plans to repair some of its platforms