Size does matter to Mike Squires - and the smaller the better.

The 42-year-old, pictured, is in charge of the smallest heritage steam railway station in the country - a voluntary job he has done for 20 years.

In that time he has transformed Damems Station on the Keighley & Worth Valley line from a weed strewn, dilapidated halt, into an award winning jewel in the railway's crown.

The station platform is just long enough to take one coach and boasts a tiny signal box and waiting room with just enough intimate space to seat four people and accommodate a lavatory and booking office - all lit by gas.

And its original early 1900s look is all down to Mike, who lives in Steeton, and some helpers who re-built the replica cream and maroon waiting room with its brass fittings and gas lights.

The station signal box arrived in the early 1970s - until then the signals were operated from a lever box in a garden opposite the platform.

Mike, who lost his job as a textile engineer earlier this year, spends almost all his spare hours at the station - mostly on his own.

"I have to do everything from flagging the train down if someone wants to get on, selling tickets, operating the signals and manually opening and closing the wooden gate on the level crossing and tending the garden.

"And I have to keep the place looking spruce. It's like the Forth Bridge - it takes about three years to paint it all round and then you have to start again."

And it can be a lonely job. Trains do not stop automatically and have to be flagged down and it's a rare sight to see a car wanting to cross the level crossing on the narrow cobbled Damems Lane.

"But I like it. You can get fed up but there's always somebody on the end of the telephone to have a laugh with," said Mike.

Although he has been at Damens for 20 years, he has been a member of the railway man and boy - joining in 1974, as a 14-year-old pupil at South Craven School, Cross Hills, near Skipton, inspired by a talk by the late Bob Cryer, a railway founder and former Keighley MP.

He became a volunteer in 1979 and took a shine to the diminutive station.

"I started doing maintenance work here and then when the station master at Haworth retired, we all moved up one and I got this job," he said.

Damems has won a number of top prizes and Mike's proudest moment was in 1995 when the station won an award for its perfection from British Rail.

The station was axed by British Rail in 1949, one the earliest stations to be closed by the company and did not open again until the late 1960s when the five mile line was bought by the Keighley & Worth Valley railway.

In its heyday at the turn of the last century it employed seven people.

Now Mike runs it almost on his own and is refusing to get steamed up about his 20-year commitment. "It's been a labour of love," he said.