Latest news with #NationalRailwayMuseum
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
First passenger steam train to go on show in city
The first steam locomotive to haul a passenger-carrying train on a public railway is set to go on display in Derby. Locomotion No.1 was built 200 years ago by Robert Stephenson and Company, a Newcastle-based firm named after the son of "father of the railways" George Stephenson. It became the first locomotive to carry passengers on a public train when it was used on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in September 1825. The locomotive is now set to go on display at train manufacturer Alstom in Derby at a three-day event called The Greatest Gathering, which is part of Railway 200, a year-long celebration marking the creation of the railways. Locomotion No.1 is one of a number of rail vehicles from the UK National Collection which have been loaned to Alstom by the National Railway Museum, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2025. Robert Stephenson and Company became part of Alstom in 1989 as a result of successive mergers. Alstom managing director Rob Whyte said: "We are very excited that Locomotion No.1 will be joining an already unprecedented roster of historic and modern rolling stock at The Greatest Gathering. "I want to thank the National Railway Museum – and indeed countless other partners across the UK rail industry – for supporting our mammoth event for Railway 200. "We look forward to welcoming ticketholders to Britain's biggest rail celebration later this year." The Greatest Gathering will take place at Alstom's Litchurch Lane site from Friday 1 August to Sunday 3 August, and will show more than 50 rolling stock exhibits. Follow BBC Derby on Facebook, on X, or on Instagram. Send your story ideas to eastmidsnews@ or via WhatsApp on 0808 100 2210. Ticket sales resume for major train gathering event First look at Derby-made HS2 train interiors Alstom wins new £60m refurbishment contract Train-maker Alstom wins £370m Elizabeth line order National Railway Museum
BBC News
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
First passenger steam train Locomotion No.1 heading to Derby
The first steam locomotive to haul a passenger-carrying train on a public railway is set to go on display in Derby. Locomotion No.1 was built 200 years ago by Robert Stephenson and Company, a Newcastle-based firm named after the son of "father of the railways" George became the first locomotive to carry passengers on a public train when it was used on the Stockton and Darlington Railway in September locomotive is now set to go on display at train manufacturer Alstom in Derby at a three-day event called The Greatest Gathering, which is part of Railway 200, a year-long celebration marking the creation of the railways. Locomotion No.1 is one of a number of rail vehicles from the UK National Collection which have been loaned to Alstom by the National Railway Museum, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Stephenson and Company became part of Alstom in 1989 as a result of successive managing director Rob Whyte said: "We are very excited that Locomotion No.1 will be joining an already unprecedented roster of historic and modern rolling stock at The Greatest Gathering. "I want to thank the National Railway Museum – and indeed countless other partners across the UK rail industry – for supporting our mammoth event for Railway 200. "We look forward to welcoming ticketholders to Britain's biggest rail celebration later this year."The Greatest Gathering will take place at Alstom's Litchurch Lane site from Friday 1 August to Sunday 3 August, and will show more than 50 rolling stock exhibits.
The Guardian
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Are York's developers aiming high enough with UK's largest regeneration project?
On an area the size of 63 football pitches next to York's Victorian railway station, work is under way on the UK's biggest city centre regeneration scheme, which will expand the area by a third. The £2.5bn project, called York Central, aims to transform a vast 45-hectare (111-acre) site – once a major railway manufacturing hub with iron foundries, signalling workshops and wagon stables, now mostly a drab car park – into housing and offices. In the works are 3,000 homes beside a large park, a 200-bed hotel, a hub for business start-ups with a focus on rail, agricultural and media tech and biotechnology, and an expansion of the National Railway Museum. The scheme promises to create an estimated 6,500 new jobs, including 1,500 during construction. It also includes a major new building for a government ministry. The tenant has yet to be confirmed, but the Guardian understands it will be the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and an official announcement is expected in summer. York is one of Defra's four main hubs, alongside Bristol, London and Newcastle, and 854 civil servants will move from the current office on the other side of town into the new six-storey, 195,000 sq ft government building, which can house up to 2,600. The state-of-the-art structure, which will have solar panels, air source heat pumps and a green roof, is due to be completed by 2028. York Central forms part of the government's plan for change that promises growth for every region, and its industrial strategy that names digital and technologies, and life sciences as two key sectors. It 'will see a ripple effect for the local economy', Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, said when she visited in February, adding: 'What we're really clear on as government, growth has to be across the whole of the UK.' Stephen Hind, Network Rail's head of business development for the eastern UK, says one of York's biggest problems is an outflow of expertise from the city. 'There's not necessarily the space for those companies to grow.' After previous failed attempts to remodel the site several decades ago, the landowners National Rail and Homes England have teamed up with UK developers McLaren Property and Arlington Real Estate to get the new master plan off the ground. They are backed by £150m of public money, most of it from the government agency Homes England, with £30m from City of York council. The project, bigger than similar regeneration schemes in the capital at King's Cross, Battersea power station and British Land's £5.6bn Canada Water in east London, is part of York's 10-year growth plan, and should be completed about 2038. However, local campaigners worry that the opportunity to do something different and build a 'utopia' with walkable neighbourhoods in the spirit of England's garden cities could be squandered. 'The opportunity this presents to York is huge. It's very rare to be able to do things more or less from scratch,' says Jane Hustwit from York Central Co-Owned, which campaigns for a community-led mixed-use neighbourhood. 'So if we repeat in York an off-the-shelf city development, making all the same mistakes again, it would just be heartbreaking.' At the heart of York Central is the expanded railway museum with a big new square in front as the 'cultural gateway' to the area. Rayner has confirmed a £15m injection into the institution from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – without which the near-£100m museum revamp would have been in danger. The rest will come from corporate partners, trusts and individual donors, with funding going towards a new circular central hall with a cafe connecting the museum's two existing buildings – the North Eastern Railway's 1873 goods office, which was used as a freight depot until the early 1970s and now exhibits royal carriages but is closed for refurbishment, and the Victorian engine shed. The latter houses the museum's collection of locomotives such the 737 featured in the movie Chariots of Fire, the Flying Scotsman, and the only Japanese bullet train found outside Japan. The York Central scheme includes a new western entrance to the railway station and two new bridges over the East Coast line, while car parking will move to a multistorey car park on the other side of the station closer to the historical centre. Tom Gilman, head of regeneration at McLaren, wants to avoid creating an 'oasis of privilege' and insists the new neighbourhood will be 'car light'. However, campaigners have voiced concerns over the decision to close a section of Leeman Road to allow for the construction of Museum Square and the museum's central hall, arguing this will cut a traditional working-class area off from the city centre. Residents will be forced to take a long route round when foot access through this space is limited during museum closing hours. 'Symbolically, it cuts that community off,' says Phil Bixby, a local architect and treasurer of York Environment Forum. 'There's a lot of feeling of ownership of the history, heritage of this place there, there are people whose families worked in the railways for generations.' The museum insists that the local community will not be cut off, pointing to new alternative routes under construction. The campaigners hope that the developers will listen to them. 'The pandemic taught us a lot about what good neighbourhoods look like,' says Bixby. Construction on the first lot of 1,000 homes is expected to start next year and people are due to move in from 2028. All homes are to be built to Passivhaus standards for energy and comfort, with heat pumps planned and potentially a deep geothermal system to provide heating and hot water. There will be a mix of one and two-bedroom flats, about 60% of the total, as well as three- and four-bedroom houses. At least a fifth of the homes will be affordable but the developers say they are aiming for 40%. Of the affordable homes, the majority (80%) are slated to be social rent, with the remainder made up of discounted market rent and shared ownership, Gilman says. David Skaith, the mayor of York, hopes the new homes could stem the tide of university graduates and other young people leaving the city because of high rents and house prices. Tenants who rent privately in the city pay an average of £1,117 a month, up by 2.6% in March from a year earlier, according to the Office for National Statistics. In January, rents were still 5.9% higher year on year. The average house price in York dipped by 1.6% to £299,000 in February, while across Yorkshire and The Humber, values were up by 7.5%. 'To have such a large-scale site in a small historical city like York is quite unusual and much needed in terms of investment and housing,' Skaith says, adding that it would be transformative for the wider region, which needs better transport links from east to west, such as more frequent train services between York and Scarborough. James Farrar, chief executive of York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority, agrees, saying 'the worst deprivation is on the coast'. He says homes being rented out on Airbnb or other holiday home sites has worsened the problem: 'Housing affordability is an enormous challenge across York and North Yorkshire,.' Andy Shrimpton, founder of the Cycle Heaven bike shop in York, wants the developers to think big with their plans for the site, arguing that a failure to aim high could lead to a generic 'estate devoid of any interest, amenity, community or joy'. He adds: 'We've done this long enough to know what works best in cities – dense neighbourhoods where we allow for, and mix up, all of life's activities – work, rest and play.'
BBC News
10-05-2025
- General
- BBC News
Gallery and minster win top Yorkshire architecture prizes
A converted hospice, a city's revamped 700-year-old landmark church and an interactive gallery are among several projects in Yorkshire to have been awarded prestigious architectural awards for Royal Institute of British Architects (Riba) has recognised Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery at York's National Railway Museum as its Building of the Year in its Yorkshire Awards, while its creator De Matos Ryan was named Project Architect of the the regeneration of Hull Minster and the refurbishment of two Victorian buildings in South and North Yorkshire were also the projects were praised by Riba for their "quiet ambition" and how they "inspired and uplifted". A Riba spokesperson said this year's winners, chosen from a shortlist of seven, "exemplify architecture's power to transform - turning spaces into places of connection, creativity, and care". Wonderlab: The Bramall Gallery was described by Riba as "light and spacious", offering a STEM-focused learning experience for young jury praised the architects' "design interventions" as "controlled and considered", celebrating "the creative process and language of railway engineering principles". Meanwhile, the Young People's Space - a timber pavilion at St Gemma's Hospice in Leeds, providing "home from home" accommodation and support spaces for children and young people affected by serious illness or a family member's death - was named by Riba as its Small Project of the Year in its Yorkshire Awards. The "careful regeneration" of the Grade I listed Hull Minster by Bauman Lyons Architects Ltd was also it a Yorkshire Award 2025, Riba said its jury had been "impressed with the new-found possibilities of the building, as a place of worship, cultural and civic centre, gallery, marketplace as well as a warm space and place of refuge".Other winners were the refurbishment of Petronella House, a Victorian villa in a Sheffield conservation area, by Chiles Evans + Care Architect, and the transformation of the Duncan Place Library & Community Hub by EDable Architecture in Loftus, North Yorkshire, into a youth and community facility, a family base and a library. Presenting the awards at a ceremony on Thursday, Gayle Appleyard, Riba Yorkshire jury chair, said: "Amid these varied contexts, this year's Yorkshire award-winning projects stood out for their quiet ambition - many having been realised during the challenges of the Covid pandemic, yet they managed to do a lot with a little. "These buildings don't shout. Instead, they quietly improve, enhance, and bring joy to the lives of the people who use them."Individually these projects inspire and uplift, but collectively, they remind us that architects do far more than design buildings, they shape the way we live, work and connect." Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North
Yahoo
20-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Best-loved railway art unveiled after global vote
A global vote has unveiled a shortlist of the UK's best-loved railway artwork to celebrate 200 years of the modern railway. Twenty paintings have been selected, nine of which are held at the National Railway Museum in York. The public has now been invited to choose an outright winner to be announced on 9 June, the birthday of rail pioneer George Stephenson. Shortlisted artwork includes paintings by 14 artists, such as renowned railway painter Terence Cuneo. Famous works by J.M.W. Turner and Eric Ravilious are also included in the final 20, along with two works by Norman Wilkinson, whose paintings are featured in popular travel posters. Female painters Anna Todd, Ann Emily Carr and Grace Lydia Golden also made it into the shortlist. The top 20 were selected by a public vote from a longlist of 200 artworks compiled by art education charity Art UK. They were drawn from 11 public collections in the UK, including the National Railway Museum, Hopetown Darlington and The Postal Museum. Nearly 4,000 votes were cast, according to organisers. Heritage Minister Baroness Twycross said: "For two centuries, our railways have carried passengers and freight as well as inspiring artistic creativity across Britain. "This remarkable collection showcases how deeply trains are woven into our cultural fabric." She added she had been "delighted" to see such a diverse shortlist and encouraged people to vote for their favourite. Anyone can register for the final vote to choose the nation's favourite, with polls closing at midnight on 1 June. The paintings will be displayed in The Railway 200 Gallery in an exhibition on the Art UK website until 31 December 2025. Railway 200 commemorates the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway in 1825 when George Stephenson drove Locomotion No.1 a distance of 26 miles (42km) between Shildon, Darlington and Stockton in the north east of England. Listen to highlights from North Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North. National Railway Museum Railway 200
