The Plym Valley Railway is looking to elevate its customer experience and food offering by swapping a temporary portacabin for a former buffet carriage which used to grace the rails in yesteryear.

Planning permission is being sought from Plymouth City Council to position the carriage at the front of the railway’s Marsh Mills site alongside a former high speed power locomotive. Both will be refurbished and refitted to be visually appealing, weatherproof and functional and meet the buffet’s demands.

Outside will be picnic tables and a new landscaped area replacing the weed and rubble which currently exists.

The Plym Valley Railway Company Ltd is a conservation organisation that runs heritage and diesel trains throughout the spring, summer and autumn.

It was formed in 1980 to restore part of the ex-Great Western rail branch line from Plymouth to Tavistock which closed in 1962 during the “Beeching” cuts.

The first milestone, Marsh Mills to World’s End, was completed in September 2001. This was followed in May 2008 by completion of the line to Lee Moor Crossing, allowing a run of three quarters of a mile along the Plym Valley.

On December 30 2012, 50 years and one day since the line was closed, the Plym Bridge platform was opened to the public and one a half miles of track was completed.

Currently the railway’s buffet is housed within an old portacabin located on the main platform. Planning documents say it has become unfeasible to maintain, due to the portacabin’s age, and it is too small to accommodate seated customers internally.

The railway has been given the opportunity to recycle a former buffet carriage, which was once used on the mainline railway.

Both the buffet and locomotive will be decorated with the same livery and give the aesthetics of a train that used to travel from the south west to London daily and was maintained in Plymouth’s own Laira Depot, just a stone’s throw from The Plym Valley Railway. They will be complemented by a mock station platform.