THIS is a year when what happens off stage at York Theatre Royal will be as much a talking point as the plays. No wonder the January to October brochure bears the message "An Extraordinary Year".

Dominating the months ahead will be the £4.1 million redevelopment of England's longest-standing regional theatre, a project that sees the building close after The Head That Wears The Crown on March 16. If all goes to plan, Dame Berwick Kaler's next pantomime will be the reopening salvo.

Yet the Theatre Royal will be anything but dormant, instead forging renewed links with the National Railway Museum, where a 1,000-seat tent will be erected for two productions on an epic scale.

The first will be In Fog And Falling Snow, a community play in the manner of the 2012 York Mystery Plays and 2013's wartime memoir, Blood + Chocolate; the second, a revival of the Theatre Royal and NRM's 2008 and 2009 hit, E Nesbit's The Railway Children, with the original locomotive from the 1970 film.

Written by York playwrights Bridget Foreman and Mike Kenny, and staged from June 26 to July 11 in a co-production with Pilot Theatre, In Fog And Falling Snow will tell York's railway history from the 1840s, pioneer George Hudson et al, with a cast of 200 performing both amid the NRM collection and in the purpose-built tent.

"Bridget and Mike have been working on their text with a big curatorial team from the NRM, and it's a very exciting relationship to be entering into," says Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden. "It's been interesting to see how we progress as we bring together the museum's narrative and the theatre's narrative when we're growing a theatre out of the back of the museum.

"The first half will take place throughout the NRM, the second half in the tent theatre, so we will go from a museum with lots of items into a specially created space. That means we're looking at how narrative is explored in a museum and how it's explored in a theatre, and there's lots for each of us to learn."

Damian has a further reason for being delighted by this new collaboration. "This year is the 40th anniversary of the NRM, and putting on a new play there is a celebration of having this museum in York, where we're very lucky to have such a range of cultural institutions and museums, when that's not the norm for a city of this size," he says.

"One of the things we're hoping to achieve is for the community to look at the NRM in a different light and to look in a different way at how it works.

"It's true of a lot of cultural things on our doorstep that we say we've been to them but probably not as recently as we think, as those cultural things are outside are the normal rhythm of the day, but that's a shame as they are there for us to relate to in a powerful way. This year's link-up gives both the NRM and York Theatre Royal a different point of contact for people to relate to."

At the heart of In Fog And Falling Snow will be the disgraced, displaced George Hudson, the man who put York on the railway map, and his nemesis, George Leeman.

"What Hudson and Leeman were was part of an industry that was new and fresh and didn't know itself as there were no boundaries and you could make a lot of money," says Damian.

"That's a complicated equation when it relates to a new, unproven industry that changed the DNA of human beings and made our world totally different, with rail tracks changing everything about who we are now with an ability to move around over distances in a way that cars have never been able to match."

The Railway Children, adapted by Mike Kenny and directed once more by Damian Cruden will follow from July 31 to September 5 with perennial pantomime performer Martin Barrass confirmed for a return to the role of station porter Albert Perks.

"There'll be new faces too and we'll be using the tent we had for the Toronto production with a seating capacity twice as big as last time," says Damian.

Assessing the popularity of the YTR/NRM play that is also running at King's Cross this year, he suggests "it's a culmination of things".

"The story itself is very potent and it's a very clear, succinct and moving adaptation; Christopher Madin's music is exceptional, as is Craig Vear's sound design; and Jo Scotcher's set is beautiful," says Damian."Then you have the locomotive, and the combination of all these falls into place. Everything fits."

The Theatre Royal programme also takes in performances in the De Grey Rooms ballroom; participation in York International Shakespeare Festival around the city in May; youth theatre shows at Fairfax House and the De Grey Rooms and holiday activities in the same building.

For full details and tickets, visit yorktheatreroyal.co.uk