The huffing sound of the approaching beast comes rolling and ricocheting through the valley. We scramble to our feet; the kids playing in the meadow below run over to a rise where they can see the tracks; excitement builds. But the rapid-fire chugging of the engine sounds closer than it really is. A minute or two later the noise abruptly cuts out, lost somewhere in the sinuous curves of the gorge, but we know what’s coming – a good old-fashioned steam-powered locomotive.
It is a sunny Saturday, and Goathland feels like a sort of performance, plying visitors with cask-strength nostalgia from both the big and small screen. In the immaculate vintage train station, where the platform guards have waistcoats and pocket whistles, Harry Potter tourists shuffle around on guided tours of “Hogsmeade”. Heartbeat fans take selfies by the antique hand pumps and old-style frontage of “Scripp’s Funeral Services/Aidensfield Garage”, which is actually a gift shop. There is a sense of blurring between reality and fiction – and as ever, if you’re looking for a “lost” England, the latter is the best place to find it.
The surrounding moors are an ocean of purple heather and the woodland waterfalls of Mallyan Spout and Thomason Foss look tropically sun-dappled. After a walk, we have settled on a hillside just outside the village in anticipation of the arrival from Whitby. Newton Dale is thought to have been gouged by meltwater surging from a glacial lake; now the steam trains of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway puff along the meandering route this ice age torrent created, carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers every year.
There is an irony in the fate of the steam engine, that great force of industrialisation and urbanisation, now often reduced to puffing through rural backwaters like this as a tourist attraction. But, evidently, I am a sucker for hackneyed nostalgia too: when the locomotive appears around the bend, sending up huge clouds of steam and noise, the feeling of joy is irresistible. We wave to the passengers and dozens of them wave back. As theme parks go, this one is undeniably fun.
