Chris Binks will give a talk, ‘Alight here for Kirkdale!’ Reflections on a rural railway - Gilling -Pickering (NER) Branch 1871 - 1964

In 1874 the North Eastern Railway finally came through this moorland parish, where the narrow Helmsley to Scarborough Road passed St Gregory’s Minster and splashed through Hodge Beck. It would cause controversy and disrupt ancient patterns of parish life and livelihoods, but also open half-isolated communities to the wide world, and offer new opportunities for work, commerce and leisure. Using contemporary sources, textual and pictorial, Chris Binks, who remembers the railway from childhood and witnessed the line’s demolition, reflects upon its history - long since closed but still remembered and traceable in its legacy.