New efforts under way to bring station back to life

The first stage of the station's reuse will be in the form of a tearoom which is being sub-leased by Kingfisher Railtours from the West Coast Railway Co.

Kingfisher aims to run steam locomotive tours which either stop or start at Hellifield Station and a caf/tearoom is the start of its project. Other rooms in the station are earmarked to house an exhibition on the Settle-Carlisle Railway.

Hellifield railway station was revamped amid much fanfare in November 1994 following a £500,000 grant. But since then virtually nothing has happened and the building is once again in a sorry state of repair.

The station first opened in 1880, but by the 1960s its use was diminishing. By the 1970s its usefulness was deemed at an end.

The restoration work was to be followed in the May with trains travelling between Leeds and Carlisle stopping at Hellifield. There were also plans to link a regular timetable between Hellifield with Clitheroe to open up the Yorkshire Dales from Lancashire.

Among the plans at the time were the creation of a steam railway sidings, leisure facilities, an hotel - of which separate plans have since been passed on adjoining land - and a link road to the A65.

The latter is now in place and forms part of an approved development to create a 126-acre rural environmental centre adjacent to the station to the west of the village.

The opening of the tearooms will see a relaunch of the project to bring the station back to life.

Roger Hardingham, owner of Kingfisher Railtours, based at Watershed Mill, Settle, said it was particularly poignant that the station buildings were being brought back into use this month, as it was exactly 125 years since it was first built when the line from Blackburn came into Hellifield.

"I am really looking forward to getting the station back into use. My vision is to try and help the regeneration of the line and try and get some life into it," he said.