THE National Railway Museum in York is planning to use shipping containers to improve its food facilities for visitors.

The huge cargo-holders will be stacked in the south-east garden of the museum, if proposals are approved by City of York Council.

The museum wants to construct, adapt and refurbish the containers so they can operate as an outdoor pizza service and ice-cream kiosk, complete with sliding doors.

Its management also hopes to move its old-style Valiant railway carriage to the garden area so it can become a Victorian tearoom.

Council planners are expected to make a decision on the museum’s proposals over the summer.

A planning statement sent to the authority by SHH Architects, who are representing the National Railway Museum, said: “The south-east garden has been used for various temporary activities at the museum, but is currently solely used as a route for trains in and out of the Great Hall and is actually just a paved and gravelled area.

“Each of the shipping containers will be repainted and branded with railway cargo symbols and graphics, so that when the pizza servery is closed and the container doors are closed off, they appear as stacked railway cargo containers.

“When the facility is open, the doors open up to show counters and glazed screens.”

The architects said the railway carriage would undergo “an internal fit-out” to turn it into a tearoom business.

The plans have been drawn up in the wake of the museum’s NRM South project, which saw a new art gallery, shop and foyer and a revamped Station Hall open in 2011/12.