Garden Railway Forum

As many of you know, the clubhouse was sandwiched between two derelict Pullman coaches.
However, last night one of the coaches was set alight. Luckily the blaze was spotted and the Fire Brigade attended in 4 minutes!

This was the scene this morning..








Here you can see what a lucky escape we had..




Still, the "show must go on", though numbers were down today..

Sad end to a once grand coach, at least the clubhouse is just about unscathed.

Could you tell me more about the tram seen in the last photo?

williamfj:68367 wrote:Could you tell me more about the tram seen in the last photo?

Not a lot I'm afraid, it's probably one of Davids scratch-builds - I'll ask next time I'm down.

Bit late on the ball Greg...lol though not a laughing matter didnt realise it was that close.. there wasnt a smell of meths nearby was there!

Ouch, that is sad with the fire and all. Have they established the cause?

A Mamod!!!

Is the clubhouse covered by insurance?

How can a 200 yr old coach catch fire was it arson

How dare someone set it on fire!!!

So sorry we missed today. Tim had to work a 12-hour shift, so I spent my morning at North Scarle (7 1/4 & 5").

What a nightmare. I'm glad the club house is not too damaged but can the pullman be restored?

Sir Clothem Cap:68414 wrote:What a nightmare. I'm glad the club house is not too damaged but can the pullman be restored?

In truth, the body was pretty far gone and would probably only have yielded parts and patterns for a reconstruction, but now there's hardly anything left - best to salvage any useable bits, cut the rest up, burn the remains and convert the area to more parking for the garden railway!

It was the intention, within the next few weeks, to dismantle the coach as it was too far gone to be restored. Now somebody has saved us the job.
It must have been arson, it would seem that somebody has a grudge against the MRT: the 'Tin Tabernacle' had its windows broken a few weeks ago, some signalling cable was cut and ONE FOOT REMOVED(so it obviously wasn't scrap thieves) and now this.....

As for insurance, the committee are looking into that but the excees may be high.
But we are looking at the space for extra parking and other things....Glenis would like a bit more garden to dig...

I'm off down there shortly to have another look and see if there are any more developments

Oh yes, and by the way, I was down there Saturday afternoon, left about 4.30 and there was nothing alight then (and I didn't throw a fag-end in as I was leaving).
Apparently it started about 9.30 in the evening and the main concern when the fire brigade got there was to keep the flames away from the gas cylinder compound, which can be seen in some of Greg's excellent pics.
I was called at about 10.00 to let the services into our clubhouse to make sure the fire hadn't spread into it, unfortunately, I was suffering from liquor-mortis and so Keith, our treasurer, had to do the honours and go down and let them in. The daft thing is, there is a key to the clubhouse in the station office but nobody had a key to the station office!!

So is the other Pullman OK/still restorable? I can't help being a little worried that no MR Pullmans are listed on the VCT database! As the first British pullmans, these MR vehicles are of exceptional importance; surely an appeal for a fast-track restoration would meet its target? (I'd certainly contribute!) And if the MRB doesn't need it, it could earn its keep being hired out to other lines...

Non of them are going to be restored.

The other behind the garden railway is going to be torn down (eventually)and the two at swanwick are just going to be dry stored.

Christ, very lucky indeed. I only hope tyhe scumbag firebug responsible is caught...

dougrail:68435 wrote:Christ, very lucky indeed. I only hope tyhe scumbag firebug responsible is caught...

Unlikely