To help secure its future, the Wensleydale Railway, based at Leeming Bar near Northallerton in North Yorkshire has launched a fundraising appeal.

The appeal is designed to safeguard the railway’s long-term security as it needs to balance increasing operating and maintenance costs with the need to generate and secure new income.

With 22-miles of track, the Wensleydale Railway is one of the UK s longest heritage railways. To maintain such a length of track, it is becoming harder to obtain good quality rails, sleepers, and track-related items at affordable prices. As part of its development plans, the railway is also looking to have some of its services operated by steam locomotives.

This latest fundraising appeal is called ‘Securing our Future’, and has following goals to safeguard the railway’s future:

• Secure sufficient track materials to support plans to restore passenger services to Redmire.
• Meet ongoing maintenance needs into the future.
• Build a service & ash pit at Leeming Bar to support plans to operate a steam service.
• Improve the visitor experience and generate additional income.

Track, points, and signalling items worth approximately £500,000 have already been donated, which will secure the railway’s track material needs for the foreseeable future. The site needs to be cleared, and the cost of transporting the materials to the railway is anticipate at up to £50,000.

Securing the track will support the plans for Redmire, future maintenance needs, and enable us the track at Leeming Bar to be replaced as part of the proposed ash pit project; it will also enable a storage siding to bne built at Wensley Station.

Construction of a service & ash pit is an essential part of steam locomotive maintenance and operations, and is necessary to support plans for operating some steam services.

Anyone wishing to donate to the appeal can do so here.

One of the railway’s most popular events is its ‘Wensleydale Fryer’ Fish and Chip trains, which are so popular that all of this year’s trains have sold out.

For the 2025 season, RailAdvent Plus Gold members receive a discount of 15% off the price of train tickets ton the Wensleydale Railway.

“Recently there has been a slight deviation from our goal of restoring passenger services to Redmire this year. This shift in focus has come about because of a very welcome opportunity that has arisen to acquire vital track materials, and our plans to install service & ash pit facilities at Leeming Bar in support of future steam locomotive operations. Both things will be of significant benefit to secure our railway’s future.”

“As a result of these opportunities, and the timescales & logistics involved, it has therefore been necessary for us to slightly adjust our current Redmire programme of track repair work accordingly. We will, however, be continuing with ongoing sleeper replacement and drainage work on the Leyburn to Redmire section of our railway and we remain committed to our goal of restoring passenger services to Redmire as soon as possible.”

Richard Leathley, Director of Wensleydale Railway PLC and Chairman of The Wensleydale Railway Association (Trust) Limited