A FORMER good depot and home to the national collection of original royal carriages is set to get a £500,000 refurbishment.

The National Railway Museum's Station Hall, in York, is home to six royal carriages, including one of the venue's most popular attractions – Queen Victoria's original 1869 saloon.

The refurbishment of the Station Hall, which is a Grade II listed building, will start in the spring and is being carried out thanks to the Friends of the National Railway Museum.

Charlotte Kingston, head of interpretation and design, said: “I am hugely grateful to the Friends of the National Railway Museum who have enabled us to create an exciting permanent exhibition which will inform and inspire future generations.

“Station Hall is very popular with our visitors and our changes will be impactful but sympathetic, using new collection items and railway stories to bring the railways to life, while retaining the character of the original building.”

The charity organisation which supports the work of the museum, has raised £300,000 from members to develop and refresh Station Hall’s permanent exhibition.

The project will redisplay the carriages into complete royal trains matched with period locomotives.

An addition will be class 47 locomotive, Prince William, one of a select number of locomotives to have hauled the current royal train.

Due to start in the spring, the exhibition refresh will see an estimated 200 new collection items and 25 rail vehicles go on display, with work scheduled to be complete by 2022.

Alongside the new display, the Science Museum Group will also provide £200,000 to complete physical improvements to Station Hall’s roof and walls.

Philip Benham, chairman of the Friends of the National Railway Museum, said: “I am delighted that the Friends are the principal funder of this important project. Over the years we have contributed more than £1.5m towards some 60 museum projects, but this is one of the most significant yet.

“Stations are where passengers first meet the railway, and the scene for many individual encounters and dramas.

"The Friends are excited to have this opportunity to help the museum tell their important story anew, together with the equally vital stories of the men and women who worked at stations, or simply passed through them.”

The Station Hall project will provide a greater focus on the roles of railway workers and passengers and underrepresented stories from railway history, including women’s experiences of working for the railways and the first black railway workers from the Windrush generation, who helped shape Britain’s post-war railway.

It will also reveal stories around the building itself and the movement of goods around the city and beyond.

A significant new object to go on display in the Hall will be an original wooden WH Smith kiosk, currently in the conservation workshop, which would have stood on the platform of Waterloo Station.

The project will also feature greater use of film and sound, with new installations drawing on the museum’s archive, such as the pioneering sound recordings of Peter Handford and, another project also funded by the Friends, the museum’s National Archive of Railway Oral History (NAROH).