A SKIPTON man won an award for ‘50 years of professionalism, dedication and passion’ to the rail industry.

Skipton resident Tony Young received the Judges Special Award at the Global Light Rail Awards held in the Bloomsbury Ballroom in London on October 2 “for 50 years of professionalism, dedication and passion”.

Host, the BBC’s Nicholas Owen, said: “Tonight, we honour someone of the highest calibre, without whom the revival of light rail in the UK might genuinely not have happened.

“He has given a lifetime of service to the transport industry as a planner and thinker, and this is what his former boss said about him: 'Our prospering street-running tramway (in Manchester) has gone from being a gleam in his eye in the early 1980s to become the beating heart of our city, and everyone ought to acknowledge that it was his brainchild'.”

Tony, who has an autobiography titled ‘The Tramcar Will Return’, is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and a Churchill Fellow and spent much of his working life in Manchester developing the Metrolink tram system and his expertise has been in great demand worldwide.

He retired to Skipton in 2015.