COULD this old Monmouthshire railway station find a new lease of life in Cardiff?

Experts are looking at moving the old Railway Station at Raglan to the open air museum at St Fagans, and even using it as a working station.

For years Monmouthshire has looked at refurbishing the building, which is currently hidden within a council yard off the A449, but plans proved too costly at £85,000.

Railway enthusiasts also approached the council but none produced a plan to remove it.

Instead, the council approached St Fagans National History Museum who expressed an interest in rebuilding it on their site.

A council report says unless the museum takes it the station will have to be demolished, or funding found to refurbish it.

Gerallt Nash, St Fagans senior curator of historical buildings, said the museum told the council it was among the kinds of buildings they were looking for.

“It’s a nice example of a typical rural station,” he said.

“A lot of these buildings have been used for other purposes and a lot have been altered out of all recognition.”

Once the council makes their offer, St Fagans will look at where the building will fit.

It could be put either in the open-air museum or even along the railway line that runs through the village.

Museum workers would then measure the building, which would be demolished brick by brick and shipped by lorry to Cardiff where it would be rebuilt.

Independent Raglan councillor Andrew Crump said he could remember the steam rising from the trains in Raglan when he was a boy.

“It’s an honour for us that it could be the Raglan station going there,” he said.

Cabinet member Bob Greenland will make the decision on whether to offer the building to St Fagans tomorrow.

The railway station was built as part of the Coleford Monmouth, Usk and Monmouth railway in the 1850s.

It went out of service in 1955 when passenger services on the Raglan line ceased.