Society member Jim Kay, being the owner of a LNER Gresley Teak pigeon carriage, approached the PWRS committee with a request to relocate his carriage from its location at Carnforth to the PWRS site at NPL Thornton.
The carriage had to be moved because its location at Carnforth was undergoing changes which would mean that access to the carriage to carry out any sort of restoration work would no longer be possible.
It was agreed that the carriage could be placed at the NPL site and that the PWRS volunteers would assist with any future restoration work. In return Jim offered to give the PWRS a 50% share of the ownership of his carriage.
The volunteers at the NPL site, lead by project manager Geoff Ogden had been tasked with moving equipment and in particular a shipping container which was restricting the access into the area that the carriage would be stored at NPL.
The delivery of the carriage had an additional problem in that the access road bridge into the NPL site over the railway has a weight restriction.
Again, Geoff was tasked with working alongside the haulage company to obtain permission to cross over the bridge. Fortunately the weight of carriage and the lorry were within the parameters of the bridge weight restrictions and the delivery was successful.
Since the pigeon carriage has been at NPL a small team of volunteers have made it water tight and a restoration plan is underway.