Born-again station house offers chance to become line’s last signalman

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By Geoff Courtney

ncludes a grandfather who was a clerk for the LNER and BR, and a father who was an LMS engineering pupil at St Rollox works in Glasgow, there was only one subject for Chris Ware to specialise in when he surprised colleagues by resigning from his role as a BBC journalist to become a full-time artist.

NYMR’s rocket: BR Standard Class 4MT 2-6-0 No. 76079, nicknamed the ‘Pocket Rocket’, pulls into Levisham station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on July 13 with the 2pm Whitby-Pickering train. The station house is being converted into a holiday let by Chris Ware, the line’s artist in residence, who has a studio in the historic property. GEOFF COURTNEY
NYMR’s rocket: BR Standard Class 4MT 2-6-0 No. 76079, nicknamed the ‘Pocket Rocket’, pulls into Levisham station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway on July 13 with the 2pm Whitby-Pickering train. The station house is being converted into a holiday let by Chris Ware, the line’s artist in residence, who has a studio in the historic property. GEOFF COURTNEY

Inevitably that subject was steam railways – and now Chris has taken that link a stage further by converting the former signalman’s house at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway station at Levisham into a holiday let that is steeped in railway history.

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The house is owned by Chris’s 89-year-old father Keith, who, after joining the LMS at St Rollox, enjoyed a successful career with London Transport, for whom he oversaw the automation of the Victoria Line, and finally the Docklands Light Railway with the driverless trains that, said Chris, his father had always wanted for the Victoria Line.

Read more in Issue 220 of Heritage Railway


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