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A replica royal railway carriage officially opened by the Prince of Wales has been saved from a serious fire in a museum in a former station.

Handout photo taken from the Twitter feed of @StStMegs of a fire at the Old Royal Station in Ballater, Aberdeenshire.

Handout photo taken from the Twitter feed of @StStMegs of a fire at the Old Royal Station in Ballater, Aberdeenshire. Image by St Margarets Project/Twitter/PA Wire

Emergency services were called to the Old Royal Station in Ballater, Aberdeenshire, at about 2am yesterday.

The station, once used by members of the Royal Family, adjoins a restaurant which was destroyed by the blaze.

Firefighters, however, managed to save part of the museum which housed the carriage.

Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the museum in 2008 to officially open the reproduction Victorian railway carriage, an exact replica of the one used by Queen Victoria in 1869 to travel between Windsor and Ballater.

At the height of the incident, about 50 firefighters with five fire engines and five special appliances were at the scene in Station Square.

(Press Association)