Updated: A MAN died after he was hit by a freight train in Copmanthorpe.

Rail services around York were cancelled and delayed for about two hours after a 52-year-old man, who has not been named, was hit by the train on lines close to Temple Lane, in the village shortly after 5am yesterday.

A British Transport Police (BTP) spokesman said: “BTP and North Yorkshire Police officers attended the incident, which was reported to police about 5.10am and is currently being treated as non-suspicious. Paramedics from the Yorkshire Ambulance Service also attended, but the man, believed to be 52 and from Copmanthorpe, was pronounced dead at the scene.”

A spokesman for East Coast Trains said the incident had affected its first services of the day from about 6am, but by 7.10am all trains were running as normal.

The spokesman for the BTP said the train involved was a freight train service, not a passenger service, which was running between Leeds and York. He said the line was reopened to normal services two hours after the accident and a file had already been opened for the coroner.

BTP said it would not release man’s name until an inquest had been opened and adjourned, likely to be by the end of this week. In 2006, John Power was killed by a train near Moor Lane in Copmanthorpe, when the car he was driving crashed through a fence into the path of a passenger train.

Following an inquest in 2009, York coroner Donald Coverdale said the exact circumstances surrounding his death “will remain a mystery”, and he could find no reason for the York father driving on to the line.