Category: Britain

As the world’s media feasts on the ultimate silly season story and predicts a close race between Reform leader Nigel Farage and Count Binface in the comical and record breaking Clacton-on-Sea by-election, what better time than now to take a first ever trip along the Sunshine Coast Line.

There are very few parts of our national rail network I have not travelled, but one missing link until now has been the 18-mile double track route from Colchester to the Essex resort, along with the five-mile single-track offshoot from Thorpe-le-Soken to Frinton-on-Sea and Walton-on-the-Naze.

Continue reading “Silly Season on the Sunshine Coast”

Having enjoyed the sight of some interesting special workings in Devon and Cornwall over the past couple of weeks, the promise of more loco action tempts me to pay my first visit for two and a half years (on 2 July 2026) to ever-charming Abergavenny on the Marches Line from Newport to Shrewsbury.

My last visit in January 2024 had led me to discovering a fine vantage point in some woods just south of the station and signal box, so after taking shots looking south from the station’s old footbridge, my plan was to venture back to this spot in the hope of photographing some loco workings passing the Abergavenny semaphores.

Continue reading “Loco action at Abergavenny”

SIX MONTHS before nationalisation threatens to cost me my FirstGroup employee travel concessions on GWR, as has already happened on SWR, and the promise of fine weather tempts me to take a couple of rail trips to the South-West on consecutive Saturdays (20/27 June 2026) to photograph special workings heading to Devon and Cornwall.

First up was a trip to the famous sea wall at Dawlish on 20 June, where in the space of less than five minutes there was the sight of two special workings bound for Torbay, with LNER B1 Mayflower (61306) heading to Kingswear, closely followed by Hastings units 1001/1013 on an epic run from Hastings to Paignton.

Continue reading “Summer specials in the South-West”

Plans for the automation of two level crossings on the York-Leeds “Harrogate Line” will mean a major reduction in semaphore signalling at the remarkable eastern end of this fascinating route, between Harrogate and Poppleton, a growing village three miles north-west of York city centre.

Over the course of 5¾ miles of single line between the stations of Hammerton and Poppleton the half-hourly trains between York and Harrogate will pass three level crossings – Wilstrop, Marston Moor and Hessay – each currently boasting gate boxes with up and down home and distant signals, all but one of which are semaphores.

Continue reading “Major signalling changes for the Harrogate Line”

After five days’ walking a highly-scenic stretch of the South West Coast Path from Padstow to St. Ives with a group of friends, time for a couple of trips on the marvellous St. Ives Bay Line using a bargain-priced Day Ranger (£2.75 with railcard) then a walk south from St. Erth to the remote Rosengrouse Road over-bridge to capture trains passing Britain’s most south-westerly semaphores.

My luck was in on the afternoon of 13 May 2026 when not only did the sun shine, but I had the luck to capture two trains passing the semaphore signals that can be seen looking back from the bridge towards St. Erth, with up outer home signal SE68 on the left, alongside down section signal SE7.

Continue reading “Sunshine and semaphores in the South-West”

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”

An enjoyable return visit to Pantyffynnon in February 2026 prompts me to pay another overdue return on 21 April 2026 to what is now the only other mechanically-signalled location west of Cardiff in South Wales, and a trip to Tondu on the Bridgend-Maesteg branch line.

Four years on from my March 2022 visit and the only real change since then has been to the rolling stock and destinations served by branch services, with TfW Class 170/175 units replaced by Class 197s, all of which now shuttle between Maesteg and Ebbw Vale Town, rather than serving places as far afield as Cheltenham Spa and Holyhead.

Continue reading “Tondu revisited”

Among the handful of isolated locations across Southern England that still boast any mechanical signalling, one remarkable outpost is in the charming town of Deal, where semaphore signalling has hung on almost 15 years since completion of a major re-signalling project in East Kent at the end of 2011.

Deal boasts one of the classic Type 13 signal boxes built by the Southern Railway (1939) in what is known as the Odeon or glasshouse style, with a model of it produced by Hornby. Another working example (also with semaphores) can be found at Bognor Regis (feature: March 2026), while there are preserved examples at Horsham, Wimbledon, Woking and Portsmouth Harbour.

Continue reading “Return to Deal”