Recreating the age of steam – in a care home

A care home in Gloucestershire is encouraging residents to reminisce by creating their own vintage train carriage experience.Reminiscence can be an extremely powerful tool, especially for those with dementia, and now a care home in Stroud, Gloucestershire have decided to help residents look back on a time when train travel was a rather different experience – via steam locomotive.Scarlet House Care Home have created a corner of their care home to look like a vintage train carriage. There’s a special screen on the wall that looks like the window of a train, and will show views of the countryside whizzing past. There’s also a table and chairs, luggage rack and lamp to really set the scene.The simulated carriage was installed by a company called RemPods, who specialise in creating reminiscence rooms or areas to help those with dementia. Each of RemPod’s rooms is designed to look like scene from a bygone era with other pop-up scenarios including a pub, a cinema and a typical 1950s living room. RemPod received funding from Dragon’s Den entrepreneurs Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden.‘This is going to be part of a unique new area of the home,’ said James Macleod, customer relations manager at Scarlet House.‘We will be serving residents and relatives with an old fashioned afternoon tea on their journeys.‘This will add to the wellbeing of the residents in helping them remember times gone by.’Watch the video below for a demonstration.Short video of our new interactive train feature. @DementiaCNSpic.twitter.com/NLxQVWr14Y— Rempods (@Rempods) 6 May 2016