IN response to your article, I offer the following memories of my train travel in Ryedale.

During my school days I travelled with my family to visit my great aunt at Fir Tree Cottage in Gilling. We nearly always travelled by train, which was exciting for me as I’ve always had an interest in railways. The train of four coaches, mainly of old North Eastern Railway origin, some with clerestory roofs would leave York from platform 12 or 13 (now eight), usually hauled by a class D20 or D49 engine.

We would stop at all stations on the way – Beningbrough, Tollerton, Alne, Raskelf and then leave the main line at Bishophouse Junction, though sometimes we stopped there until the line was clear to take the curve to Sunbeck Junction where the fireman would lean out of the engine to collect the tablet from the signalman to authorise travel on the single line.

Stops were rare at Husthwaite Gate and the next stop would be Coxwold where the line opened out to double track through the station. In later years, this is where our train would pass a Pickering to York train and I think the two crews would change trains and return home. It was then single line again through Ampleforth to Gilling. Two separate single lines then ran east, one to Helmsley and Pickering, the other to Malton.

During the war years some of the direct services were suspended and we would have to catch a main line service to Alne and on one occasion Pilmoor, from where the branch line service to Pickering would start.

There were a few minutes on some days when Gilling station would spring to life with the arrival of the pick-up goods train, which would marshal a few waggons and vans around; then after the hustle and bustle the little train would trundle off, crossing gates and signals restored to normal and the station and adjacent signal box would assume a rural tranquillity again.

The last train travelled on January 31, 1953, but three years earlier I had made the point of travelling through to Pickering and at about the same time travelled on the push-pull train from Pickering to Seamer and Scarborough. Malton to Driffield was a lovely trip through the wolds. We occasionally went to Whitby, travelling from York to Malton, Rillington and Pickering.

The only line I didn’t ride on was Gilling to Malton. The local services ceased in the 1930s though I could have done it if I had caught one of the summer excursions which ran from Scotland to Scarborough or Butlins at Filey until 1962.

David Thomas, Bolton Percy