The loco life we lead

STANDING on the platform at Horsebridge Station, it's not difficult to imagine crowds of Victorian women in their long dresses, and men in formal coats with top hats and sticks, lining the track as a steam train chugs into view.

I can easily picture the guards standing at the ready, and the stationmaster leaning against the open door of the parcel office, watching as little children fill with excitement at the sound of the train's high-pitched whistle, and the sight of clouds of silver-grey smoke billowing upwards to mask the sky on a sunny spring morning.

But this idyllic picture of a busy Victorian station must have been hard for Val and Tony Charrington to imagine, when they decided to buy the building in 1985.

When they bid £50,000 at auction to buy Horsebridge Station, near Romsey, it was a dilapidated ruin after suffering 20 years' of dereliction.

In the 16 years since the Charringtons moved in, the station, which was built in 1865, has been lovingly and sympathetically restored into any rail fanatic's dream home.

Complete with signal box, waiting room, parcel room and carriage, the station is an immaculately kept Victorian treasure - so why hasn't it been snapped up since it was put on the market nearly a year ago?

"We thought we'd get more interest but because it's such a different property it takes a special sort of person to want to buy it. It would be ideal for a railway enthusiast but most railway enthusiasts can't afford it," says Val, who has now reduced the price of the grade II listed building from £850,000 to "offers over £695,000".

"It was such an impossible thing to price and until you actually put it on the market you don't know if you've pitched it correctly or not. But having looked in the newspaper recently for something of the equivalent amount, I couldn't see anything that compared with what we have here - but that's only because I'm biased!"

In fact, Val loves the house - which is on the market with Nicholas Zorab of Romsey - so much that she's actually rather reluctant to move. When she thinks back on all the happiness the family has enjoyed at Horsebridge, her attitude to finding a buyer is "whatever will be will be".

"We will just leave it on the market until it sells and if it doesn't we will stay. It's been a great place to live - it's unique and it's got so much character," she says.

To hear Val, a former cabaret singer in London, talk with so much affection about her home, it seems quite incredible that neither she nor Tony, who are both in their early 60s, are railway buffs themselves. They bought the house from Hampshire County Council because Val had a friend and an aunt in Horsebridge and knew the area well.

They had to put in a bid for the station and draw up plans to show how they would restore it before the property was theirs.

Val explains: "Neither Tony nor I were into railways and trains initially. This property came on the market and we'd been looking for quite some time and hadn't found anything.

"We lived the other side of Winchester and our two daughters were at school in Salisbury, so we wanted somewhere nearer the school and with a little bit of land for a pony or two.

"There was a lot of competition so we were very, very lucky to get it, but we wanted to keep it as authentic as we could. It was in such a bad condition but we were allowed to have a delayed completion in order to get the house in some sort of habitable state.

"We realised we could do a lot with it - it was very exciting."

The station - which closed in 1965 - was originally owned by the London and South Western Railway company and later by Southern Railways. In its heyday the line, which linked Redbridge with Andover, was known as the "Sprat and Winkle", presumably because sprats and winkles were transported from Southampton to the north of England along the route.

Sadly, as the station fell into disrepair, the original signal box, signals, track and station signs disappeared, and all that was left of the original station were the two platforms and canopies. So when Val and Tony, and their then-teenage daughters Jo and Susie, moved in, they began an exhaustive search for replacements. It took a year and many thousands of pounds to restore the house, and another year to plant the grounds into paddock and gardens, as the land was originally railway sidings.

The original station comprised the three front rooms - which were the office, booking hall and waiting room while the rest of the building formed the living quarters for the stationmaster, with two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen, but no bathroom.

Val recalls: "Everything in the house had to be replaced - windows, doors, the roof, and the kitchen, which had to be rebuilt because it was so rundown. When we bought the house there was a notice outside which said 'Danger - keep out', and the local fire brigade used the building to practise falling down through the floor!

"Our friends said we must be crazy but once you'd started and got enthusiastic about it, it really got quite exciting.

"Once we'd moved in we thought about what we could add to get the character of the place back to its original state. We needed things from Southern Rail so it would be authentic."

Track was bought from Eastleigh coach works, while British Rail regularly sent details of stock it was selling off. Gradually, the Charringtons managed to buy a signal box which was originally from Yalding in Kent, and a 1922 London and South Western corridor coach, which had latterly been used as a canteen for workers repairing the line in the Bournemouth area.

The signal box and 60ft, 35-ton carriage were delivered to Horsebridge by road on a specialist low-loader lorry, after which restoration of the iron-clad carriage was carried out by railway workers from Eastleigh over several months. When British Rail began electrifying the south Hampshire and Dorset line, Val and Tony bought two signals from Weymouth Station.

"This completed the restoration as far as we could go, apart from platform paraphernalia like trolleys, lamps, old signs and bicycles, etc, which we've bought over the years whenever the opportunity arose," says Val.

"I suppose once we started we began adding all the time, and people who had bits of railway armour used to bring them to us and say, 'Would you like some old bicycles or signs?' The local auctioneer would phone me up if he had bits and pieces to sell, so gradually we collected quite a few things, including a wonderful station bench from Basingstoke."

In about 1991, once the carriage and the rest of the station had been restored to its former glory, Val started offering the parcel room and carriage as holiday accommodation, as well as a venue for dinner parties, weddings and other special occasions. Val has many happy memories of summer parties - some railway themed - with bands playing on the platform and everyone dancing on the track.

"That wasn't our intention when we bought the station but once we moved in and looked around, we thought this has so much potential," explains Val, who started off with a cook but then did all the catering herself. She still organises dinner parties, with a friend doing the cooking while she looks after the preparation side.

Although Val and Tony - a commercial property chartered surveyor in London - may not have been railway enthusiasts when they bought the station, their sentiments have certainly changed since. And Val can quite understand why some people walking along the footpath behind the house feel the impulse to sneak in the gate to get a closer look.

"I wouldn't go looking at other stations or go train-spotting, but when people come to me with some piece of railway armour they don't want, it's fantastic," says Val.

"We get people who are railway enthusiasts who just want to come and look, so we have a notice outside to say they need to ring the dining room to make an appointment. We

also had to put one up to say it's a private house and to keep to the footpath, because otherwise we get every Tom, Dick and Harry walking straight through all summer."

She adds: "I will be very sad to leave but it's a lot to manage. It's quite a big garden - it's quite a big place for us altogether, which we don't need any more, unfortunately.

"It's a beautiful place and we are very fortunate it wasn't pulled down, as so many of the old stations were."