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(rshsdepot) Railway Properties Make Wonderful Homes for Those Happy to Love and Live in Part of the Nation's Heritage

From the Mail on Sunday.

Bernie Wagenblast
Transportation Communications Newsletter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/transport-communications

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I Always Wanted to Be a Train Driver. Now I Own a Station... And Sleep in 
the Ladies' Waiting Room ; Railway Properties Make Wonderful Homes for Those 
Happy to Love and Live in Part of the Nation's Heritage


You don't have to have dreamed of being a train driver since you were five 
to enjoy living in a station.
But it can help, especially when railway enthusiasts turn up at your door 
fascinated by the cut of the canopy over the platform and the emblem on the 
ironwork.

Or there are times when the local heritage society wants steam trains to 
chug a few feet from your kitchen window on summer weekends and wonders if 
you'll show the WI your ticket rack.

As it happens, Nigel Teulon was one of these five-year-olds, climbing 
wide-eyed aboard engines and into signal boxes whenever kind-hearted rail 
staff near his Cambridgeshire home would let him.

He went on to work for British Rail and is now an engineering standards 
manager for One Railways, based at Norwich. At 40, he's still a railway 
romantic.

'It's great to delve into the history of the railways in a district, learn 
about the people who worked at a particular station and think of those who 
used it, maybe went to war from it, kissing loved ones goodbye for the last 
time on the platform,' he says wistfully.

Nigel's home is a country station in Hardingham, Norfolk. It was built in 
1845, abandoned by the Great Eastern Railway in 1969 and was a wreck in 1995 
when Nigel bought it.

He lived in a caravan for five years while painstakingly restoring and 
converting it into a stylish three-bedroom home. 'What used to be the 
ladies' waiting room is now my bedroom,' he says.

Nigel isn't thinking of selling. He's far too excited about the steam trains 
that will run past his platforms from May when a heritage line, organised by 
the Mid-Norfolk Railway Preservation Trust, starts up, the sidings are 
landscaped and a signal box restored.

But when owners of the more than 1,000 decommissioned railway properties on 
both closed and working lines now converted into residences decide to move, 
they often contact Ray King, editor of Traction And Rolling Stock 
Advertiser, to spread the word.

'Maybe you wouldn't want to live right next to a track at Clapham Junction, 
but in country towns and villages, it's a different- matter,' he says.

'Railway stations were very important to the community 100 years ago and 
were well-built, usually at the end of imposing driveways, because the 
railway companies had lots of money.

It's not surprising they convert so well.' Joiner Carl Dare, 62, would 
agree. He and his son Ian, 43, also a joiner, have restored and lived in 
several.

'My late wife and I always loved trains and stations and my son inherited 
our passion. The noise is like birdsong to us,' he jokes. 'I often wave to 
passing drivers.

And it's good to know that if petrol prices go up and I can't afford to 
drive, I can always catch a train a few yards from our front door.' They 
have recently converted what was once a large goods shed in Nafferton, East 
Yorkshire, where two-carriage trains now pass on the Scarborough to Hull 
line every half an hour. Carl bought it in 1999 as a total wreck and worked 
on it for nearly three years. Now it's for sale at about Pounds 585,000.

It's a strikingly attractive Grade II listed building with thick walls, 
15ft-high windows, a galleried open hall, four bedroomstwo bathrooms, an 
office and an orangery: a light, airy hall almost 50ft by 30ft, ideal for 
use as a studio, workshop or garden business premises.

The Dares actually live in a former station master's house nine miles away 
in Bridlington, bought 23 years ago when 'the doors were hanging off and the 
roof had holes in'. It's also on a working line and up for sale. 'We'll stay 
in whichever is not sold. Or if another great place comes on the market, 
we'll move there,' says Carl. But it would have to be by a railway: 'I'd 
never want to live in a normal house.' Rebecca Turner, 34, a childminder, 
and husband Howard, 46, a studio sound engineer, are selling a very 
different- property: the Station Master's House at North Elmham, near 
Dereham, Norfolk, on the market for Pounds 325,000. Built about 1830, it was 
originally the gatehouse to an old school taken over by the founder of the 
famous children's charity, Thomas Barnardo, in 1903.

'Apparently, the headmaster then bribed the railway to put a station here to 
serve the school by offering the gatehouse as the station house,' says 
Rebecca.

It was the sturdiness of the house and its location at the end of a long 
private drive, with views of fields and open woodland, that attracted her 
six years ago. There is a large living room with open fire, four bedrooms, a 
room in a turret, a new extension housing a large kitchen/diner, utility 
room and cloakroom, all exquisitely fitted and decorated.

'I'm not a trainspotter but my son Alex, five, and daughter Maddie, three, 
and their friends love being next to a railway line,' she says. 'It's like 
living in a Thomas The Tank Engine story. They are entranced by the old 
carriage which sits on the track. They think it's wonderful that the 
Mid-Norfolk Railway plans to restore the line there should be weekend 
heritage services running in a few years' time.

'And they love looking around the former station on the other side of our 
garden. The trust has restored it and it's open as a visitors' tearoom 
during the summer.' Retired teacher Valerie Madle, now in her 60s, enjoys 
her home's links with railway history, too. She has lived for 35 years in 
what she believes was the only station mistress's house in Britain, by the 
former Langford Station halt, near Maldon, Essex, and her daughter Flora, 
30, grew up there.

She is selling at an asking price of Pounds 215,000 only because she now 
finds the steps down to the cottage from the railway bridge hard to manage. 
She spotted the classic Grade II 1840s cottage, with its triangular garden, 
while driving across the railway bridge to the side of it.

The former residents sold train tickets from the window of what became her 
bathroom, put the flag out to stop the train and worked the level crossing.

But the line had been a casualty of Dr Beeching's cuts in the Sixties.

'The track was later taken up and the land cleared for cyclists and runners 
following the Blackwater Rail Trail.

I've kept a few of the signs and often show enthusiasts old photographs and 
the remains of the platform,' she says.

Like Valerie, Neil Ambrose who is selling his home, the stonewalled Dent 
Station in the village of Cowgill, Cumbria, knows it will be hard finding 
anywhere else as interesting. At 1,150ft above sea level, Dent Station is 
the country's highest mainline station and it has spectacular views in all 
directions.

Converted and upgraded after British Rail sold it in 1985, the station now 
has three bedrooms, one with the original ticket sales window. The ladies' 
waiting room is now a kitchen and the original sandstone walls in the 
downstairs gents' toilets, as well as many other period details, have been 
preserved. There is also a large snow hut, used for snow clearance work and 
once used to billet troops.

What's more, trains stop at the platform every hour and a half, taking 
passengers to all stations on the Settle to Carlisle line. So you could say 
the house, with a price tag of Pounds 280,000, has excellent transport 
links.

. Sunnyside House, Nafferton: Dee Atkinson And Harrison, 01377 241919.

Langford Station, Maldon: 01621 852674. Stationmaster's House, North Elmham: 
Sowerbys, 01485 533666. Dent Station, Cowgill: Bairstow Eves, 01524 262044.

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1097
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org