Pen & Sword Transport – ISBN: 9781526714732
https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Britains-Last-Mechanical-Signalling-Hardback/p/16355
Almost a century after the first colour light signals appeared on Britain’s railways in the early 1920s there are still a considerable number of places where the passage of trains is controlled by the Victorian technology of a signaller in a signal box pulling a mechanical lever that will tug up to ¾ mile of wire that then moves a signal arm up or down.
Replacement of mechanical signalling has been going on in earnest since the 1960s and continues apace, with losses over the past couple of years at Blackpool, North Wales, Humberside, and at a number of locations in Scotland. Next to go will be the delightful Wherry Lines between Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft. Continue reading “Gareth’s next book – out now!”
Taking heed of Government advice to avoid making all but essential rail journeys, the current potentially dismal and very challenging period seems like a good moment to look back to better times, when we were all free to travel at will.
Completion of the Wherry Lines re-signalling in February 2020 means that there are now just two outposts of mechanical signalling in the whole of East Anglia, both of which are on the busy cross-country route between Ely and Peterborough.
Contrary to what Greta Thunberg and many Millennials and Generation Z-ers might care to believe, the idea of trying to avoid harmful pollution by making less use of the private car is also deeply ingrained in some of us who date from earlier generations.
To mark publication next month (April 2020) of my new book – a history of Croydon (London) Tramlink – this is the first in an occasional series taking a look at Britain’s urban light railways, and begins with a visit to Birmingham and a trip on its fast-expanding West Midlands Metro.
England’s remotest station is back in business, almost a year and a half after its longer-than-planned temporary closure, as part of the Wherry Lines re-signalling programme.
Confirmation that HS2 is to go ahead raises fundamental questions about the way in which every other railway revival project around the country is treated in future, given that the traditional economic case for HS2 has always been distinctly questionable.
Completion of re-signalling work early last year at Pitlochry and Aviemore has left just a handful of mechanically-signalled locations along the splendid Highland Main Line between Perth and Inverness, most northerly of which are those at Dalwhinnie and Kingussie.