Category: Articles

Tourists are pretty thin on the ground during November in the West Highlands so, ever anxious to avoid crowds, and taking the opportunity offered by ScotRail’s seasonal Club 50 £17.00 flat fare (remarkable value for a 514-mile round trip from Edinburgh) it seemed a good time to  make a long overdue return to Kyle of Lochalsh.

While the 82-mile route from Inverness has been hailed as the world’s most scenic rail journey, passenger numbers are distinctly modest out of the tourist season. I and my travelling companion were two of only ten passengers on board the 13.35 service from Inverness after leaving Dingwall on 14 November, with slightly more aboard the 12.08 ex-Kyle of Lochalsh a couple of days later. Continue reading “Off-peak return to Kyle of Lochalsh”

At 01.04 on Saturday 11 November 2017, the 23.30 hrs Northern Rail service from Manchester Airport will draw into Platform 6 at Blackpool North station and go down in railway history as the last train to be signalled into the station by Blackpool North No. 2 Signal Box and its splendid semaphore signals.

Once the empty stock has left the station, it will be closed for complete re-building, the signals and box demolished, and the 17.5-mile line from Preston shut to until next spring, as work begins in earnest on the route’s modernisation, electrification and re-signalling. This diagram inside the signal box shows the final truncated layout, with just four remaining platforms. Continue reading “All change at Blackpool North”

My nationwide quest to visit every possible location in England, Scotland and Wales that still has semaphore signalling comes to a glorious end at a remarkable outpost of mechanical signalling, and one that for much of the year controls the daily movement of steam-hauled trains.

Three decades after the rest of the West Highland lines from Glasgow to Oban and Mallaig were converted to radio signalling (RETB), one charming reminder of the past is Fort William Junction, just north-east of Fort William station and convergence of the route from Glasgow with the Mallaig extension. Continue reading “Fabulous Fort William”

Paying a brief return to Humberside’s fine semaphore signals (see my earlier post “Humberside’s semaphore swansong”) it is heartening – and not surprising – to hear that the timescale for completion of the resignalling project has slipped several months from the planned date of spring 2018.

Not surprising perhaps when a visit this week to Welton, one of the boxes I missed last time, reveals a group of high-vis suited workers sitting in a van bearing the name “Dynamic Track Solutions” and being anything but dynamic – doing precisely nothing in fact!

So there is still time to savour a stretch of main line controlled by mechanical signalling and for me a chance to get to the two easternmost boxes at Welton and Melton Lane, to visit the fine gate box at Oxmardyke and to discover an excellent location to see a variety of traction on the two routes which diverge at Gilberdyke Junction. Continue reading “Humberside re-signalling delayed”

Veteran signaller Alan Hayward has put up a commemorative sign reading 1896-2017 in one window and is already counting down the handful of shifts he still has to work in Poulton No 3 Signal Box before its final closure – and his early retirement – in less than two months’ time, on Saturday, 11 November.

Like four other remaining signal boxes on the 17.5-mile route from Preston to Blackpool North, the last of what were once five signal boxes at Poulton-le-Fylde will be swept away as the route is closed for its long-awaited electrification and re-signalling, a transformation set to take until at least next May to be completed. Continue reading “A Signalman’s Farewell”

Work is expected to begin early next year on an ambitious £1 million eight-month long project to restore the historic Rewley Road Swing Bridge at Oxford, more than 30 years after the last freight train trundled across it in May 1984. Despite having long since lost its rail services, the bridge remains owned by Network Rail and stands close to the main railway line just north of Oxford station.

After securing financial support from a range of bodies, including Historic England, Network Rail, the Railway Heritage Trust and Oxford City Council, the bridge’s custodians, Oxford Preservation Trust (OPT), now plan to invite tenders from specialist engineering firms, with the aim of restoration work beginning early in 2018. Continue reading “Historic Oxford railway bridge set to swing again”

Looking at the massive success of London Overground in reinvigorating rail corridors around the capital, such as the North London, East London and South London Lines, it is perhaps remarkable that there is one short stretch of line in North London where time has seemingly stood still, with control by semaphore signals and a sparse traffic comprising the occasional slow-moving freight train and empty stock movements between the capital’s termini.

This is what is known as the Dudding Hill Line, a four-mile long stretch of double track route which diverges from the North London Line at Acton Wells Junction, close to North Action underground station, before heading in a clockwise arc passing junctions with the West Coast Main Line at Harlesden, the Chiltern Railways route at Neasden to end in a triangular junction with the Midland Main Line at Cricklewood. Continue reading “Dudding Hill: the line that time forgot”