Ward room

Beyond the Harbour Station kitchen, before the alterations forced on the building by the building of the access road to South Snowdon Wharf, was a small enclosed yard. Off to the left (between the yard and the platform) was a moderately large, self-contained room that had originally contained the ovens for heating the naphthalene-filled foot-warmers which were routinely issued to first class passengers on winter trains during the Victorian era. The ovens were still in situ when the railway was reopened in 1955 and it is unfortunate that they were not preserved as they were a rare survival even in the 1950s. The Ward Room name arose because it was Pat & Geoff Ward who rebuilt the room to make it fit for hostel accommodation, including the destruction of the furnace (on the instructions of Allan Garraway) during the winter of 1961/62. They occupied the room during the summers of the early 1960s.