header  

Flour Mill Open Days

Occasionally we have open days for local charities: none are currently planned for 2024.


Short introduction


Our location

The Flour Mill is a listed building which was converted to a railway workshop in 1995 - 1996, and used as such since 1996. The Flour Mill Ltd operates the business in the building undertaking work repairing and overhauling steam locomotives. As we are a workshop and not a steam centre or visitor attraction visits are strictly by appointment only.

Our projects

The oldest locomotive worked on to date is the National Railway Museum's LSWR Beattie well-tank of 1874, and the newest is our construction of a new replica of Stephenson's Rocket for the Science Museum in 2009. The largest locomotive overhauled so far is David Shepherd's 9F Black Prince and the smallest, apart from little Rocket, probably the Borrows duo of Wallsend Slipway No 3 and The King. The fastest loco must be City of Truro, for which we overhauled the boiler, and the slowest remains to be seen.

Our machinery

The Flour Mill has crane capacity of up to 45 tons, a lathe for wheels of up to 6' 6" in diameter at widths of up to 7' and a pendulum grinder for expansion links. The workshop is 100' long and 40' wide, with 20' under the crane, and thus suitable for most heavy engineering work.


Our employees

The two men who started work on 1 July, 1996 are working at The Flour Mill today, one full time, one part-time, and two others 17 and 15 years respectively. We are always looking for anyone interested in a career in repairing steam locomotives.