Month: May 2026

Exactly 43 years ago, on the evening of Friday, 13 May 1983, I travelled on the last ever train from Elmers End to Sanderstead, accompanied not only by a huge crowd of fellow enthusiasts, but also by a very famous photographer, who captured some remarkable images of that fateful night.

At the tender age of 25 I had recently joined the City office staff of The Observer and in my enthusiasm for a story had persuaded the News Desk that I should cover what by the early 1980s had happily become something of a rarity – not only the closure of a railway, but one in the heart of the prosperous South-East.

Continue reading “The night a famous photographer took the final train to Selsdon”

For lovers of traditional mechanical signalling there are three routes radiating from Shrub Hill station in Worcester that all retain some semaphore interest, in an area bounded by Droitwich Spa to the north and Norton Junction and Moreton-in-Marsh to the south and east.

Westernmost of the nine signal boxes to control mechanical signalling in the Worcester area is the tall Great Western Railway box at Ledbury in Herefordshire, which is one of four along the Worcester-Hereford route, dates from 1885 and boasts a 42-lever McKenzie & Holland frame.

Continue reading “A look at Ledbury”