A major milestone has been reached in the restoration of an historic Aberdeenshire train station that was destroyed by a fire more than two years ago.
Ballater’s B-Listed Old Royal Station was used by the Royal Family to travel to nearby Balmoral up until the 1960s and had become a popular tourist destination in the years since.
But on May 12, 2015, it was engulfed in a massive blaze.
More than 50 firefighters battled to save the Victorian railway station but much of the building was damaged beyond repair.
However the royal carriage and waiting room were both salvaged by the emergency services.
And now, in the midst of a major £3million renovation project led by Aberdeenshire Council, the carriage has now been returned to the newly-rebuilt platform building.
It marks the latest step as contractors attempt to rejuvenate the station and bring it back into use as a community facility.
Patrick Johnson is the project manager for Morgan Sindell who are rebuilding the station.
He said the teams were painstakingly restoring the station to its original state and were due to start work on the royal waiting room within the next fortnight.
“At the moment what we are doing is working on the roof which is why we had to move the carriage, so we could get scaffolding in,” he said.
“There’s a lot of attention to detail required because we’re restoring the building back to its former glory.
“We’ve still got part of the waiting room to fix which was fire-damaged.”
In December, Historic Environment Scotland awarded a grant of £107,500 to the project.
The council will refurbish many of the ornate interiors of the building, including swan-necked iron lamps, the entrance way and other parts of the decor, including the stained glass window.
The authority’s plans include a new exhibition space extending along the old platform, a Visit Scotland information centre, a public library and a restaurant
Alford-based Grampian Transport Museum helped move the locomotive back onto the tracks and have now been charged with helping to repair it.
The carriage sustained fire and water damage but escaped relatively unscathed compared to the building.
Mike Ward, curator, said: “If there’s anything that we can’t handle we will bring in someone else, but we have a couple of really skilled craftsmen here who I’m sure will be able to take care of what needs done.”