A NEW “Great Park” with a steam train running through it is at the centre of plans for a major new development.

A public square, hundreds of affordable homes and new urban quarters based around railway heritage are also on the cards for York's "Central" site.

A masterplan for the 72-hectare plot has gone on show at the National Railway Museum, with dozens of possibilities of how the disused railway land could become a new part of the city centre.

At the centre of the proposals is a new “Great Park’”- dubbed a “major asset for the city” - linking the existing Millennium Green park to a new public square at the railway station's western entrance.

At the exhibition, open for another six weeks, the York Central Partnership describes the park as a “sweeping green space” that would be “valley-like” at its Millennium Green end, with an emphasis on woodland and wetland features.

Closer to the city centre, the National Railway Museum would run steam train rides along the park’s edge with railway artefacts as a reminder of the site’s past.

Also proposed is a development of up to 2,500 new homes, 20 per cent of them affordable.