Today, 20th June 2023, Vintage Trains formally opened its Metropolitan Railway Carriage and Wagon Works at its Tyseley Locomotive Works.
Vintage Trains invited RailAdvent along to see the works officially opened.
The new Carriage Works will help Tyseley Locomotive Works boost its capacity due to its unprecedented demand and full order book for 2024.
The opening ceremony was carried out by Councillor John Cotton, Leader of Birmingham City Council.
Additionally, as part of the day, 5043 Earl of Mount Edgcumbe was in light steam at the front of the Pullman coaches.
Back in February, Birmingham City Council awarded a grant of £168,369 from the ERDF funded Property Investment Programme.
Additionally, TLW awarded the construction of the 1,550 sq metre floor space to Springfield Steel Building Limited in Hull.
The new building forms Phase Two of TLW's Carriage Works. Phase One is in use as a carriage repair shop and Phase Three will see further investment to include additional maintenance facilities, including carriage lifting jacks that were originally at the GWR Depot at Old Oak Common.
The carriage works will operate under the name Metropolitan Railway Carriage & Wagon Co, which its parent company, Vintage Trains Charitable Trust, acquired to promote the famous name.
The new carriage works will employ an additional ten full time staff members. Currently, TLW has 19 full time and 31 part time staff along with 155 active volunteers, and turns over around £1.4 million a year.
TLW's Chairman, Michael Whitehouse, commented: “We are delighted that this support from the City of Birmingham's ERDF fund will enable us to increase employment and skills training for a new generation of engineers, at the heart of the Tyseley community, which has a long and proud history of railway engineering excellence.”
Ashfaq Ashraf, Principal Business Officer for the City's Business Enterprise and Innovation team commented: “We are pleased to be able to support Tyseley Locomotive Works to continue its engineering growth and employ more people in Tyseley.”
A big thank you to our friends at Vintage Trains for inviting us to Tyseley to see the Carriage Works opened.
This development is crackingly good news, especially when I got to the bit about the carriage lifting jacks from Swindon. I had no idea these had been saved / secured. This represents three steps back and twenty steps forward. Not all the news need be gloom and doom.