Goathland Station: Yorkshire railway continues to attract Harry Potter fans 23 years after film was released with visitors dressing up and spending hours at the station taking photos
It has been 23 years since Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released and Goathland Station was transformed into Hogsmeade station, yet it continues to see an increase of tourists.
To many Harry Potter fans, they will spot Goathland Station in two scenes of the first film; in the beginning when Harry, Hermoine and Ron leave the Hogwarts Express train and meet Hagrid and during the last scene when students are boarding the train.
The very last scene before the credits is a shot of the railway station as the train is driving off and Hagrid is walking away in the distance.
These brief scenes took a week to film. Station master at Goathland, John Bruce, had seen a lot of the preparations taking place at the time.
“Warner Bros took over a [wide area] of the station,” he said.
“They had to construct scaffolding to a fair height to get the shots down onto the platform because there were no drones in those days.
“They also had a back screen for projection of Hogsmeade in the distance and repainted a fair bit of the station buildings.
“It was a pretty busy place when they were setting everything up, that’s for sure. They made a fair transformation.
“The folks that were at the Goathland Hotel recollect seeing the lad who played Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe, who must have been 14 at the time, going past the pub on his skateboard in between shots.”
There are many tourists from abroad visiting the heritage railway specifically as a result of its connection with the film.
“It seems to come in waves of interest,” Mr Bruce said.
“We’ve seen a lot of tourists, particularly students from abroad, arriving sometimes in groups and having photographs taken.
“We get folks in Harry Potter clothing, sometimes [they stay in] the station for hours taking photos. There’s still a massive interest in it.
“There seem to be Japanese and Chinese [tourists] in particular who are fascinated by [Harry Potter] who stay for longer periods of time, an hour, a couple of hours, getting their photos taken.
“We see quite a lot of Spanish students for example, and for some of them it’s a general visit to the UK but [Goathland Station] appears to be one of the highlights for them.
“Post Covid, it has picked up again. I suspect the number of times the films have been shown on TV has rejuvenated the interest a bit.
“Nowadays when you look at the TV schedule, the films seem to be on all the time.”
The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is no stranger to the TV industry as its various stations and villages have been the set for a variety of high profile programmes and films including Heartbeat, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Possession and more.
The attraction is hosting a film trail which is being developed further in time for its 200th celebrations next year.
“We’re very conscious about the amount of filming that’s gone on over the years,”Mr Bruce said.
“You’re probably aware that we had Tom Cruise a couple of years ago, mainly in the Levisham area.
“We have been running a film trail around the railway where folks can identify the various locations where filming took place like Possession starring Gweneth Paltrow that took place in Pickering around the same time as Harry Potter.
“Coming back to Heartbeat, the latest Indiana Jones film. The trail is something we’re looking to develop.”
Ahead of World Tourism Day, Mr Bruce said that the volunteers are instrumental in preserving the heritage of the railway.
“We’ve been running the railway now for over 50 years, basically we desperately want to keep it going for another 50 years. We can only do that through income from visitors,” he said.
“There’s an awful lot of work gone into it to preserve the locos, the carriages, the stations, even the track and bridges.
“Everything we make from it is ploughed into it to make sure there is a railway there for the future.
“You’ll see volunteers involved in every aspect of the railway, we have around 100 paid staff but we have in the region of 900 volunteers as well, some of whom are with us several days a week, some we we will see a few times a year but they are involved in everything virtually up to the railway.”