STAFF at a rapidly-growing railway engineering firm in York have overflowed into new offices in the city - with space to recruit 20 more people by the end of the year.

Halcrow, the massive property, water, highways and railway conglomerate which has a specialist signal design office opposite the central library in Museum Street, has now extended into a Grade I listed building above Lendal Post Office.

The new offices were formally opened yesterday by Jim Cornell, who is both executive director of the Railway Heritage Trust and non executive director of Network Rail, the successor organisation to Railtrack.

It means sudden relief for the York division which began with 11 people and now has 49, of whom 19 will now work out of Lendal with room for 20 more.

Dave Bishop, the Halcrow manager at York, said: "We are recruiting quickly. On current trends the new Lendal office should be full by this time next year.

"It was desperately needed because we ran out of space as long ago as January 2000.

"We have been very successful with signal design contracts, particularly as there has been a national shortage of signal design skills ever since British Rail de-nationalised in 1994. We've tackled the problem by having our own trainees."

A huge order book has meant a projected turnover for Halcrow's York offices of £2.5 million - up from £600,000 in the year 2000.

Projects include:

A re-signalling sub-contract in Kent, advising Mersey Travel on the re-tendering for Mersey Rail

A highways maintenance contract in the North East

Designing a power supply for Westinghouse at a Lincoln signal box

Advising Durham County Council on its public transport strategy

Completing a rail capacity study for a consortium of local authorities in the Tees Valley.

Contracts abroad include evaluating tenders for a high speed railway line in Kuala Lumpur and an operational safety audit on the Metro system in Singapore.

Updated: 10:10 Friday, February 07, 2003