The dangerous slam-door trains being given a surprising new lease of life

Telegraph

02-04-2025

Young people may not believe that we once hung out of train windows in order to open the door, rather than simply pressing a button. Nor will they recognise that distinctive slam as the conductor went up and down the platform, preparing the train for a safe departure.
They were a symbol of British culture and heritage, but in 2005, the slam-door train was deemed not fit for purpose. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the final unmodified slam-door train being removed from service on Britain's railways under new Railway Safety Regulations, introduced to prevent needless deaths caused by opening doors while trains were in motion. Only on a few branch lines did some carriages remain.
The design was demonstrably unsafe: in 1961, for example, six people were killed entering or alighting from a train, and 16 falling out of a carriage. There were thousands of injuries each year, and the single carriages which could be accessed only by an external door were deemed dangerous for women.
While the number of fatalities dropped dramatically when the final slam-door train left the line, it felt like the end of an era. Carriages brimming with class and character were scrapped, their like never to be seen again on our mainline railways.
We're used to seeing redundant red phone boxes repurposed as community libraries or housing defibrillators. However, the logistics and finances involved in obtaining and restoring a train carriage pose more of a challenge – especially as many were riddled with asbestos. Yet some survived and these relics have been transformed into everything from educational facilities to luxury holiday lets.
But what does it take, financially, logistically and physically, to find and restore an old carriage? Here we look at some of the people who rescued these remnants of the golden age of the train.
The High Weald holiday let
When Bryan Atkins decided, in 2017, to fulfil a long-held ambition to restore an old train carriage, some nay-sayers unkindly referred to it as the 'Tom Cruise project', in that it was Mission: Impossible.
Undeterred, the retired teacher found a 1950s Mark 1 carriage at the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway. He says: 'They're as rare as hens' teeth now, and they command a huge price. A runner [a working carriage] costs upwards of £50,000 and to get a non-runner is so unusual because most of the preserved railways have already bought them up. I was lucky.'
Bryan paid £15,000, which included transporting the carriage more than 160 miles from the Cotswolds to a field near Wittersham, Kent.
Converted for Balfour Beatty, an international infrastructure group, into a mess coach and part of a weed-killing train in the late 1990s, the interior was a tangle of redundant pipework and electric cables, part of the floor was missing and there were large holes left from ventilator flues. 'I spent about 12 months stripping it out, patching and welding it. I would have probably made my money back just by weighing it into the scrapyard,' Bryan recalls.
Over the following years, Bryan and four volunteers worked on the carriage under a giant homemade tent, grit-blasting the exterior and applying layer upon layer of paint and varnish. Several laborious months were spent just replacing the 23 windows, which were an odd assortment of sizes and specifications.
In June 2021, the carriage was moved across the Sussex border to its new home at Bodiam, in the shadow of the castle, surrounded by vineyards, next to the Kent and East Sussex Railway (KESR).
Renamed the Bodiam Glamping Coach, the carriage is now luxury holiday accommodation. Ultimately, the plan is for KESR to buy out shareholders who invested £60,000 in the project and use the income to keep the steam railway running for future generations.
As for Bryan, he is 'having a ball' as an unofficial High Weald tour guide.
'I love meeting people, offering advice on where to visit,' he says. 'Sometimes I have a drink with the guests before they leave and listen to what they've done during their time here.
'By and large, they've thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I get quite a kick out of that.'
The school library in Derby
Many pupils at Ivy House School had never been on a train or seen one up close before. So there was much excitement when they arrived at school one Monday morning last June to find a carriage waiting for them.
Ian Armstrong, the executive headteacher for Shaw Education Trust, found the carriage, once used for ferrying parcels and passengers at Nemesis Rail, a railway maintenance and spot-hire company.
Delivered on a flatbed truck under police escort, work began on the carriage in earnest, but ground to a shuddering halt when asbestos was discovered in the floor. Once it was safely removed, the team set about making the carriage as comfortable as possible for pupils.
Ian says: 'We wanted it to be usable all year round, so we went to town to make sure it had really good insulation. We put two air con units in so we could set the temperature. We dug channels under the ground to get all the wiring and cabling from the school so we could have electricity running to it. It was a logistical challenge in terms of work to be done to get it up to a usable state.'
The new library was kitted out with high-tech colour-changing lights and a television screen, while keeping some original seats and various buttons and dials, maintaining some of the carriage's original charm. The doors had to be modified to ensure step-free access, eliminating the gap so wheelchair users could enjoy the new Ivy House Express.
The project cost around £150,000, but by freeing up space within the building, the school was able to accommodate more students. The increase in student numbers enabled the school to quickly recover the investment made.
However, for the children of Ivy House, their new library is priceless.
'When the students arrive, they get excited because they want to go on the train and read – that's pretty awesome, isn't it?' smiles Ian.
An artists' cafe on the Sussex coast
A dilapidated carriage, rotting on a military shooting range in Essex, caught the eye of property developer Richard Upton, whose company, Cathedral, transformed it into the darling of Deptford.
Tasked by Lewisham Council with regenerating Deptford High Street in the face of the 2009 financial crisis, Richard bought the 1960s commuter train carriage and converted it into a community cafe. With the help of artist Morag Myerscough and local community activist Rebecca Molina, the characterful cafe connected people and kick-started the regeneration process. It even caught the attention of the New York Times.
When the carriage was no longer required, it was removed and spent the next decade in storage in Greenwich. Richard says: 'I kept the carriage because it just had a bit of my heart. It bridged the gap in the financial crisis in terms of elegant growth, rather than gentrification. There was a bit of soul in it.
'Every time I visited the site in Greenwich it kept winking at me, saying: 'What are you going to do with me?''
In 2024, Richard found the perfect location for the carriage. Working with artist Ben Wood, he acquired The Old Ambulance Station in Bexhill-on-Sea, converting the paramedic rest-stop into community artist workshop spaces with affordable rents. The building sits on Beeching Road – named for Dr Beeching, who axed many rail routes in the 1960s – in the shadow of the former Bexhill West station.
'It was a tragic, short-sighted decimation of very expensive English infrastructure, where we cut off all peripheral towns and villages. Mr Beeching did us all a great disservice,' says Richard.
Speaking about the logistics of such a project, he adds: 'It's not a very sensible thing to do, lift and transport a 60-tonne train around by lorry. Planning authorities don't always like to give permission because they don't understand why you're doing it. But once there, they reveal things of industrial heritage that are actually quite loved.'
Now trading as The Carriage, a café intended as a place for artists to exchange ideas, the new venture has proved just as popular with builders as it has with school-run parents. Once established, profits will be reinvested into The Old Ambulance Station to drive down rents to artists further.
'It gives a sense of childish joy,' says Richard. 'When you look at that, you get a sense of hope, and that's what art should be about.'
Helping men's mental health in Devon
Finding a suitable venue for a new club when living in a village can be a bit of a tall order. Particularly if that club comes with a plethora of power tools and a weighty wood lathe.
Braunton Community Men's Shed was running out of options when someone suggested converting an old train carriage into a workshop. The parish council offered space in its car park, formerly a railway goods yard before Beeching wielded his axe, and a 62-foot 1970s carriage was donated to the cause. Initially, it looked as if everything was going full steam ahead.
'We started work, but it was so rusty,' recalls Roger Byrom, Braunton Community Men's Shed chairman. 'Because it was a steam carriage [where the boiler had been located], all the metal was heating up and cooling down all the time, and the ribs were all rusted right out. We ended up scrapping it.'
The team salvaged the windows before volunteers resumed their search, spending hours scouring the railway lines and scrapyards of southwest England.
'In the end, we found the frame of an old goods carriage in Somerset that someone wanted to use for a glamping site, but couldn't get planning,' says Roger. 'It was literally just a frame, with no sides, nothing.' Two tube wagons were found at Swanage Heritage Railway to sit the frame on.
The project was funded by £26,000 in grants, but generous businesses offered their services for free, including haulage and storage containers, while the public donated tools.
After 18 months of work, the woodwork shop officially opened in October 2024. The team has acquired a second frame, this time from Yorkshire, and work is underway to transform it into an electronics engineering workshop.
'We're getting retired folk out of just sitting at home doing nothing,' says Roger. 'Some people come in for a chat, some just want to learn a new skill, others because they have nothing better to do. It doesn't matter. They can all find something good in it and that's what Men's Sheds is all about.'