VANDALISM concerns have prevented a vintage Peebles railway bench being relocated in its rightful home, it has emerged.

One of the original benches from Peebles Railway Station has been lovingly repaired, rebuilt and painted by the town’s Men’s Shed group.

When members of the Chambers Institution Trust met on Wednesday, August 2, they agreed a request from the town’s community council to relocate it beside the war memorial at the Quadrangle in Peebles, near to the current information boards at the location.

But Sam Coe, a member of Peebles and District Community Council, revealed that an alternative location was more suitable.

He said: “The appropriate place would be the old railway building in the East Station Car Park but it’s a sad state of affairs that the worry about putting it there would be it would be immediately vandalised, which is really sad as that is the place it really should go, but I understand that it should be temporarily housed somewhere else.”

Council officer Gareth Smith said: “I agree with Sam that it is the place it should be, but from the point of the environment – gates locked at night and people being around the Quadrangle all the time – it’s the logical place to be at the moment.”

Tweeddale East councillor Robin Tatler, the Trust’s chair, added: “Perhaps it may go back to where it should be in the future as I know there is work to be done on that railway building, but we’ll look after it in the Quadrangle in the meantime.”

In a report to the committee, Malcolm Bruce, the secretary of Peebles and District Men’s Shed, says: “The group I represent which is planning to refurbish the Old Railway Building outside Sainsbury’s was recently gifted one of the original station benches from Peebles Station.

“I used the facilities of the Men’s Shed to refurbish the bench, which was in bits when we got it and it has now been rebuilt and painted in what we believe to be authentic North British Railway colours.”