Wing Wah was today revealed as the big name poised to transform Wolverhampton’s Low Level station into a huge Chinese buffet restaurant.

The popular chain has been in talks about launching its latest venture at the prime city centre site. The site has been on the market for an undisclosed sum since a £6 million casino development collapsed at the 11th hour last summer, leaving its future hanging in the balance. Workers have spent more than two years painstakingly restoring the landmark station.

Talks are now ongoing with the restaurant chain and Oswin Developments, which owns the site off Wednesfield Road, about setting up inside. Wing Wah vice president Dorian Chan said today: “We have had our initial meetings about the Low Level station.

“It’s a wonderful site and we are at the early stages of talks but looking closely at it, if it goes through we would look at opening the restaurant within a year.”

The new restaurant plans have been announced just over two years since the award-winning Wing Wah chain transformed the former Three Tuns pub on Stafford Road, Fordhouses, into a new restaurant.

The 300-seater restaurant opened in November 2006, creating 50 new jobs. It is not known what would happen to the site if the Low Level Station deal ploughed forward.

The Wing Wah enterprise also has branches in Oldbury, Coventry, Birmingham and Burton-upon-Trent and was one of the few Chinese restaurants to be recognised in the 2006 Egon Ronay Awards, the same year Dorian was herself named Midlands Businesswoman of Year.

The station closed to passenger services in 1964 after 110 years in use and its parcels depot ended in 1981.

The casino was set to be one of the final projects at the £35 million development of the site, bordered by Wednesfield Road and Sun Street, which also includes homes, a hotel and pub.

After restoring the station’s ticket office and surrounding rooms to how they would have looked 150 years ago, developers are now creating new staircases and floors.