With memories of the days before the privatisation of British Rail, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway will be running Mutual Improvement Classes to train the next generation of drivers and firemen.

Mutual Improvement originated from the early days of railways, when enginemen would give up their time to educate colleagues who were rising through the grades on the footplate from Engine Cleaners to Firemen and ultimately Drivers.

Funding has been secured from the North Yorkshire Council’s UK Shared Prosperity Fund to enable the North Yorkshire Moors Railway to build a new Mutual Improvement Classroom at Grosmont Motive Power Depot.

It will provide the facilities and amenities to train the railway’s next generation of heritage locomotive drivers and will replace the railway’s previous Mutual Improvement Classroom, which closed in January 2023.

When it opens in March 2025, it will be the world’s last railway Mutual Improvement Classroom.

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund was part of the previous UK government’s Levelling Up agenda that allocated £2.6 billion of funding for local investment to improve pride in place and increase life chances across the UK.

North Yorkshire Council received £16.9 million fund programmes, projects, and activities, until the end of March 2025.

The total cost of the new classroom is £600,000 and Peter Best, a former chairman of North Yorkshire Moors Railway PLC, has donated £250,000 to the project.

Peter was recently awarded a British Empire Medal (BEM) for his services to steam and heritage railways.

Using his own money, Peter has bought and restored 11 locomotives, and says that seeing young people on a train hauled by one of his locomotives gives him “huge pleasure and pride”.

Housed in the new classroom will be components from numerous models of locomotives and priceless training tools that have been inherited or donated from former Mutual Improvement Classrooms.

Over 100 technical books on all locomotive matters will also be housed in the classroom, some of them over 150 years old, and will be used in conjunction with IT equipment so that classes can be conducted globally.

The NYMR has an important role to play in the heritage sector, preserving the unique skills needed for the protection and safe operation of historic locomotives, carriages and infrastructure. We pride ourselves on sharing our skills with other industrial and heritage railway museums and organisations.

Grosmont MIC will be the last surviving railway MIC anywhere in the world and we believe the concept is worth preserving and building on.

Laura Strangeway, North Yorkshire Moors Railway CEO