UNTIL 1985 THE SITE HAD BEEN A DAIRY FARM AND
SOME OF THE FARM BUILDINGS HAVE BEEN UTILISED BY THE RAILWAY

The floor beneath the cow shed (now Kingsmere station) sloped from all four sides to a large central drain and the first job on arriving here in 1985 was to level the floor. Windows were filled in and doors had to be raised on the wall of platform four behind which lay some of the cow stalls. This section was then turned into a long carriage shed after removing the stall partitions, and the far end of the shed turned into the carpentry workshop. At the tunnel end of the building lay the milking parlour, with hay loft above, This seemed to be the ideal place for the main workshop, so this was quickly converted and in due course the hay loft became the staff room (with access from the station footbridge).

ENGINE SHED		BUILDING THE TRACK
Behind where the station buffet is now situated were more cow stalls, which were also cleared out to become the engine shed. The wall at the entrance of this shed was missing, so after some initial temporary weatherproof sheeting, this provided an early opportunity to try out ideas for the new brickwork. It had already been decided that the long term aim would be to cover up all the existing brick elevations with a new skin more appropriate to the spirit of the Victorian era which is normally associated with steam heritage.		At the same time, work was also in progress laying the 71/4" inch gauge track, with aluminium rails and wooden sleepers. The main ride is one mile long, but the total track length including sidings, etc. is about one and half miles. Approximately 8000 sleepers, 500 tons of ballast and 100 tons of roadstone have been used in the construction of the track.

FUTURE PROJECTS

Among our future projects is a extension to our existing carriage shed, to enable secure storage of our ever expanding rolling stock fleet. This also involves additional siding, which has been laid, as part of this the opportunity has been taken to install a station avoiding line and associated new signals, for non-passenger workings.