RAILWAY heritage volunteers have pleaded with a council to give them more time to clear out from the oldest surviving railway building still in railway use in the world after it was condemned as “dangerous”.

Members of The Darlington Railway Preservation Society took their appeal over Darlington Borough Council’s deadline to leave the grade II listed Stockton and Darlington Railway Goods Shed to the authority’s leading councillors, saying their attempts to negotiate with the council’s officers had failed.

The 1833 building formed part of the early development of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and has served as the society’s base to repair locomotives for 37 years, but a meeting of the council’s cabinet heard it needed urgent repairs and was part of plans to develop a heritage attraction off North Road ahead of the railway’s 2025 bi-centenary celebrations.

The society has been told by the council it will be allowed to move back to the building when the extensive revamp is complete to help form part of the attraction, which will include live engineering displays.

Founding member of the society Barrie Lamb told a packed meeting while the society supported the council’s bi-centenary plans, the authority had handed its members “an impossible task” to move out before the end of March and at the moment the society had not identified a premises to move to.

He said there was an estimated 700 tonnes of materials, such as lathes and locomotive parts, to move.

Mr Lamb said: “There is 37 years of goods to move. All the members are volunteers, we have no paid staff. The older ones are too old to accommodate this and the young members we have work during the day. The movement is very technical, we don’t want anything damaged. We reckon we have about £2m of equipment in there.

“Just sorting it out is going to take time, but we haven’t been given time. This is very big stuff and it takes specialised transport which will cost £8,000 a vehicle. We would like more time. It’s no good saying we can move out in three months, there’s too much to do.”

The meeting heard while the council was insisting the society moved from the building quickly due to its structural issues, Mr Lamb building had been in a poor state since water damage 12 years ago and the council at the time said it didn’t have money to repair it.

Mr Lamb said: “The main problem is that the tower is falling down. We reported it to the council eight years ago and the council employed a company to survey the building. One of the main comments was that they were amazed the tower was being propped up by one of our locomotives.

“We first heard of the move in July last year when the officers showed us the plans and we have had little time to discuss it. We have only had three brief meetings, we have had no serious negotiations at all.”

He said to illustrate the scale of the task facing them the society had produced lists of the amount of equipment that needed moving for the council’s officers, but they had received no response. The society, he said, had also sent the council a proposal so that they could remain in one half of the workshop while the other half was being revamped, before moving the remaining equipment out next year, but the letter had never been answered.

The authority’s director of economic growth and neighbourhood services Ian Williams said the council was “acutely aware” that the Goods Shed was not in a good condition and of the pressing deadline to refurbish the building before the 2025 celebrations.

He said he doubted whether the society’s proposal to half move out would be possible, but he would urge officers to continue to try to find a solution to the move, which could include putting some deadlines back and finding a suitable temporary alternative base for the society.

Mr Williams said: “The intention of this programme is to create a good visitor experience with live engineering celebrating heritage and producing play and virtual reality experiences on site. Those buildings and certainly what the society have got to offer are a key part of that offer going forward. It just so happens you are in a building at the moment which is deemed dangerous and we can’t allow that to continue.”

The council’s leader Councillor Heather Scott asked for officers to arrange a meeting with the society as soon as possible to see whether it could be flexible with the timescale and help devise a plan for the move.