REGULAR users of Great Malvern railway station will have noticed the antique-style trolleys that have recently appeared on the station.

But they may not know that restoring the luggage carriers was a labour of love for retired pharmacist and ordained minister John Guise, who lives in Leigh.

He said the obsolete trolleys were given to him by retired railwayman Des Simmonds, who had kept them in his garden.

Mr Guise said: "They were rotting away and Des knew I liked restoring things, so he asked me if I wanted to have a go."

The job took Mr Guise the best part of ten years, and he replaced almost all the original wood, sandblasted the petal parts and restored the trolleys to the conditions they would have been in during the heyday of the Great Western Railway .

"Once I finished them, I started to wonder what I was going to do with them, and then I got talking to Peter Clement of Malvern Civic Society."

Mr Clement, who runs the society's subgroup Friends of Malvern Railways, said: "I talked to Network Rail and arranged to have the trolleys installed on the station. Two of them are on platform one and the smallest one is in the waiting room."

And Lord Faulkner of Worcester, president oft the Cotswold Line Promotion Group visited the station to inspwect bnteh trolleys in situ.

Mr Guise said: "It's nice to know that they are in the right place."