Goathland railway station

Where it sits. Goathland station stands in a shallow, steep-sided valley on the North York Moors, about a mile below the village of the same name and roughly eight miles inland from Whitby. It is a working station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, the heritage line that runs 18 miles from Pickering to Grosmont and on to Whitby, and it sits at the top of a long climb, which is why steam locomotives arrive here sounding as though they have earned it.

The story behind it. The first railway through Goathland was George Stephenson's Whitby and Pickering line of 1836, worked by horses and, on the fearsome Beck Hole incline, by a rope and a water-filled tank. That arrangement was hopeless for locomotives, so in 1865 the North Eastern Railway built a deviation on a gentler gradient, and the present station was opened as part of it. The buildings are local sandstone under stone-slate roofs, with the stationmaster's house, a goods shed, a water tower and a footbridge over the running lines. British Railways closed the route in March 1965 under the Beeching cuts; volunteers reopened it as a preserved railway from 1973. Goathland has since been restored to look like a North Eastern Railway country station of the early 1920s — gas lamps, enamel advertisements, running-in boards in the correct typeface, a camping coach in the siding and a goods yard laid out as it would have been. That fidelity is precisely why film crews keep arriving.

On screen. Goathland is Hogsmeade station. In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, the Hogwarts Express pulls in under the station's iron footbridge on the first-years' arrival, steam filling the platform, and Hagrid comes along the train swinging a lantern and calling the first years to follow him. Goathland appears again in the film's closing scene, when the students leave for the summer and Hagrid says goodbye to Harry on the platform. Filming began at the station at the end of September 2000. What the film does not tell you is the geography. On screen, Hogsmeade is a Highland village at the foot of a Scottish glen; in reality the platform, the sandstone buildings and the footbridge are 250 miles south of the Highlands, in North Yorkshire, and everything Scottish in the surrounding shots was added elsewhere. Later films moved the Hogwarts Express to the West Highland Line and the Glenfinnan Viaduct, and their Hogsmeade station became a studio build with visual effects, so Goathland's screen career as Hogsmeade belongs almost entirely to the first film.

What you actually see today. A small two-platform station, immaculately kept, with a tea room in the former refreshment room, a shop, and volunteers in period uniform. Stand at the Grosmont end for the classic view of a locomotive coming under the footbridge with the moor rising behind. The goods shed and the small yard are worth a look, as is the 1865 stone waiting shelter on the up platform. The station is also the mid-point of the three-and-a-half-mile Rail Trail to Grosmont, which follows the original 1836 trackbed down through Beck Hole and the wooded gorge of the Murk Esk — one of the most rewarding short walks in the national park, and easily done one way with a train back.

The village. Goathland village, up the hill, is a scatter of stone houses around wide greens where sheep graze freely and unfenced, and where they have right of way on the roads. It has a second screen identity as Aidensfield in the long-running television series Heartbeat, which filmed here from 1992 to 2010 and left the village with a shop and a garage still trading on it. Mallyan Spout, England's tallest waterfall of its kind in the area at about 70 feet, is a short scramble along the West Beck from the village.

Getting there and timing. By rail, take the North Yorkshire Moors Railway from Pickering, Levisham or Grosmont; Grosmont connects with the Esk Valley line from Middlesbrough, and NYMR services run through to Whitby in season. By road, Goathland is signposted off the A169 Pickering to Whitby road, with limited parking in the village and a small car park at the station. Trains run daily from late March to early November with reduced winter and Christmas services, so check timetables carefully: outside the season the station is quiet and unstaffed. Platform access involves the footbridge for one side, though a level crossing route exists for those who need it.