DEAN Forest Railway (DFR) has taken an unusual delivery at Whitecroft – a dismantled railway building from south Wales.

It’s an exciting time for rail enthusiasts with the Flour Mill locomotive works at Bream celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Stuart Williams at DFR said: “We have been trying for a year to secure this station building, which was going to be destroyed to make way for housing.

“We finally had permission from Torfaen County Borough Council on May 26 and began work on removal straight away.

“The first few days were spent making it safe and removing asbestos. A dedicated crew of volunteers, led by our development director Jason Shirley, then began dismantling, stacking and wrapping key pieces of the building.

“Even the rubble is back in the Forest so that we can retain any dressed stone.

“Challenges have included the building being much more robust that we envisaged – we found that the mortar mix was very hard being made from waste product from the local furnaces, and the dressed limestone so soft that it made dismantling the structure very difficult and a very slow process. 

“We also encountered some angry wasps! 

“We have two possible sites for the new building. We would like to go north of our existing railhead. If our application for a level crossing at Parkend is agreed, we should see it rebuilt in the foreseeable future.”

The Flour Mill began in 1996 with work on the National Railway Museum’s broad-gauge replica, Iron Duke, and has since overhauled many locomotives as well as building a replica of Stephenson’s Rocket for the Science Museum.

Flour Mill owner, Bill Parker said: “We want to celebrate being in business for 20 years by bringing some of ‘our’ locomotives back to the Forest, and there can be no better place to show them off than the Dean Forest Railway, richly curved and wooded, just a couple of miles away.”

Guests at the gala, which is being held between Friday, July 1 and Sunday, July 10, are the 142-year-old Beattie well-tank 30587 that helped put the works on the map, T9 number 30120 which was brought back to life despite a severely corroded cylinder block and Met 1, the famous London Underground locomotive.

The Flour Mill will be open between Friday and Sunday (July 1-July 3)with a bus link from the DFR’s terminus at Parkend.

Details of the event including timetables will be on the Dean Forest Railway’s website www.dfr.co.uk.