Brechin’s Caledonian Railway has smashed a fundraising target in the wake of a devastating fire attack.
An initial fundraising goal of £5,000 was set to help contribute towards the £20,000 cost of restoring a fire-ravaged brake van.
Volunteers spent £5,000 and four months painstakingly restoring the 1949 LMS brake van and work was completed in December 2014.
The vehicle went back into use almost straight away but its new lease of life was short-lived when the brake van was set on fire in April.
Events manager Andrew Pegg said: “So far, no-one has been caught for this mindless act of vandalism.
“Upon posting this devastating news to our social media pages, we received an overwhelming amount of support from the community.
“We were truly amazed and grateful for the response.
“As well as moral support, a large number of the community were also offering monetary donations towards the costs of rebuilding this historic vehicle.
“In light of this, we set up the Rebuild The Brechin Brake Van appeal to help raise funds to contribute towards the cost of the restoration.
“The appeal has been running for just over a month now and thanks to the generosity of the community, we have managed to exceed our initial fundraising goal of £5,000.”
A donation of £800 from Strathmore Foods on Saturday raised the total to £6,400 towards the rebuild costs with an additional £2,500 from GrainCorp Limited to be used to improve security around the station.
Mr Pegg said: “We estimate that the rebuild of this historic vehicle could cost us as much as £20,000 and we are now well on our way to that goal thanks to the generosity of many individuals and companies.”
The LMS brake van was built by British Rail at Derby Carriage and Wagon works in 1949.
It spent all of its working life travelling up and down the British Isles on the back of goods trains.
As time progressed, more and more wagons were fitted with their own braking systems, gradually making brake vans redundant.
Subsequently, British Rail began selling them off to scrapyards in their thousands.
Back in 1990, when the preservation of the Brechin to Bridge of Dun branch line was in its infancy, several volunteers visited Arnott Young Scrap Merchants in Glasgow to enquire about purchasing one of the brake vans.
A bid to save the vehicle from the cutter’s torch was successful and plans were quickly drawn up to move it to Brechin for restoration.
After the initial restoration, the brake van spent many a happy year travelling up and down the Caledonian Railway’s four mile branch line, transporting volunteers, passengers and equipment to where they needed to be.
