FOR the average commuter, a railway carriage is just somewhere to sit for a few hours a week while being transported between home and work.

But Mark Rozelaar has other ideas; he wants to make one his home.

And so on Sunday, April 10, a huge low loader carrying an antique carriage lumbered up Avenue Road, turned laboriously in front of Great Malvern station and deposited its cargo on a small plot of land beside the railway. Since then it has attracted the fascinated attention of neighbours, passers-by, rail users and staff.

For Mr Rozelaar, aged 24, the move was the latest stage in a long-held ambition.

He said: "I bought the carriage more that two years ago, but it's been down at the Gloucestershire-Warwickshire railway near Cheltenham since then. I've also had the land for about the same amount of time, but it's only now that I've got around to putting the carriage on the land."

Mr Rozelaar spent much of his childhood at a house just round the corner on Clarence Road, and attended Malvern Parish School. Both house and school are visible from the carriage.

He later went to Worcester Royal Grammar School and then Southampton University, where he studied fine art. But he said he has always had an aptitude for old machines and he currently owns a 1935 Vauxhall.

"It must be hereditary, because my father is the same way and my grandfather owned a big old motor torpedo boat, I think he once planned to buy a barrage balloon as well," he said.

Mr Rozelaar is now preparing to start work on repairing the former first-class carriage and converting it into living accommodation. He said he needed no planning permission to put the carriage on the land, but will have to seek permission if he intends to live on it permanently.

"If all goes well, it should take between three and six months. On the other hand, two years ago, I thought I'd get it done in six months, so you never know."

The carriage was built for British Rail in Swindon in 1954, and Mr Rozelaar has painted it in its original Western Region livery.

"It's probably travelled hundreds of thousand of miles in its working life, and I can't help wondering who it has carried in all that time," he said.