A PARK of converted railway carriages could provide a home for the increasing number of growing businesses in the creative industries.

The University of York St John’s business incubator, The Phoenix Centre, is working with City of York Council to identify pieces of land where a “pop-up” site could be placed for a few years, while development sites get off the ground.

Darrell Hooper, business and innovation manager at the Phoenix Centre, is now on the hunt for old railway carriages to enable them to realise the dream.

He said: “Railway carriages are synonymous with York because they were made here. They are part of York’s heritage.

“Meanwhile there is a lot of wasteland space, some of it quite big. We could put a couple of carriages down, add to it if there’s a lot of demand, and resite the whole lot if the land comes back into use.

“We’d be taking something that was probably going to be left derelict and scrapped and giving it a new purpose. It’s not like building or refurbishing a building you’ll later need to move out of,” he said.

Mr Hooper said demand for the Phoenix Centre demonstrated the need to help the increasing numbers of new businesses, particularly to provide grow-on space for businesses who have completed their time at the Phoenix Centre, which helps to nurture graduate businesses for a year.

He said they were working with the council’s planning officers, who were helping the identify potential sites, and planned to apply for funding through the council’s economic infrastructure fund or delivery and innovation fund once they had found the carriages.

Mr Hooper said the Carriage Works would be a multi-purpose community base also used for events, such as markets held by local designers and artists and film festivals, as well as being a trendy business address for creative companies.

The idea follows projects such as Village Underground in East London, where four recycled Jubilee line carriages have been converted into a home for about 50 artists, writers, designers, filmmakers and musicians, as well as providing a venue for concerts, club nights, exhibitions, theatre and other events.

The Deptford Project, which aims to regenerate the area around Deptford Train Station and its old Victorian carriage ramp in South East London, has also converted a 35-tonne 1960s South East Trains carriage into a café-bistro and community cultural centre with galleries and a pop-up cinema for short films.