Smoke Signals
Railways have been a feature of our landscape for nearly 200 years. Like the canals, whose economic rationale they destroyed, the railways created massive feats of engineering, iconic architecture, and immediately recognisable structures and patterns within our townscapes and countryside.
The steam engine, with its semi-human characteristics – that chuffing heartbeat, the boiler door face - and the rails which so comfortingly limit its invasion of our world (but please don’t mention HS2) have also infiltrated every aspect of our culture. Literature abounds in railway imagery – The Railway Children (Nesbit), Anna Karenina (Tolstoy), Murder on the Orient Express (Christie), Night Mail (Auden). All of these have film versions but film-only classics include such wonders as Brief Encounter, Closely Watched Trains, and The Titfield Thunderbolt. Small boys collected engine numbers, Baby Boomers gathered at the ends of platforms with Ian Allan books, anoraks and shoulder bags. Model railways made clockwork, then Hornby 00, a household name and today, a visit to a heritage railway is a popular family excursion.
Of course, the end of steam in the 1960s changed the level of fanaticism, but the railway press still thrives, and many Baby Boomers still watch the railways, attend nostalgic railway clubs, and love to travel behind modern as well as steam locomotives. Environmentalists applaud the railways as a green method of transport and watch the conversion of fuel to hydrogen and batteries with interest.
Technology has also caught up with that most quintessential and picturesque of railway buildings: the signal box. But let another member of Team Terroir explain.
Individual railway company identity was always significant from the very start of the Victorian railway boom. Each company developed its own particular style, its stamp, its favoured colour scheme, and much remains of this heritage in towns and villages across the country. One distinctive building, however, is becoming much, much rarer, and that building is the signal box. Many have been demolished, some preserved, but only just over a hundred still perform the function for which they were built over a hundred years ago.
Early railway companies employed Police Constables not only to maintain law and order but also to regulate the movement of trains. They were there to prevent accidents. Train technology was in its infancy and accidents were commonplace. Constables were responsible for operating the signals and they can be likened to officers in Borough and County forces who performed point duty at busy road junctions, often operating road traffic light signals. When the time came that railway companies employed their own signalmen (and men they were), separate from the police, the nickname of ‘Bobbies’ remained.
As technology moved on, ‘remote’ signals were constructed, connected by wires to a specific signal cabin. And so the signal box was born, evolving from the 1860s huts and towers housing railway policemen, to a building housing the signal mechanism, and where the signalman could remain warm and dry during a lengthy shift.
As railways expanded during the 19th century, each station would have its box, sometimes two. Signalman needed physical strength to pull the levers which linked to interlocking rods and worked the points up to 350 yards distant, or linked to wires that changed the angle of the semaphore signals which could be up to a mile away.
Most of the work was in sight of the box, either in sidings and goods yards or, in busier stations, on through-lines and platform tracks, which all needed protecting to ensure no two trains found themselves on the same piece of track at the same time. In open country and on main lines, this usually required the building of signal boxes every two miles or so, all needing staffing, and provision of drinking water and coal (for heating).
Clear sightlines from the signal were needed, and space below for all the levers, interlocking and wires. Thus the signal box evolved for the most part as a structure not unlike a small two storeyed cottage with pitched roof.
The classic ‘cottage’ style signal box. The ‘cottage’ has large windows for good sightlines, and stylish ornamental roof details, which have also been used over the more modern toilet extension! The brick built box below contains the bottom part of the lever frame and the mechanical interlocking equipment, with wires and rods emerging at ground level to link to signals and points.
Below: a selection of classic signal boxes
Row 1 (Top row), left to right: Shipea Hill, Cambs; Littlehampton, W Sussex; Holt, Norfolk. Row 2, left to right: Kirkconnel, Dumfries; Brundall, Norfolk, Petersfield, Hants.
Row 3, left to right: Chartham, Kent; Ketton, Rutland; Park Junction, Gwent. Row 4 (Bottom), left to right: Dudding Hill, north west London; Woodside Park, north London; Ruislip, west London.
And some rather more quirky boxes:
Row 1 (Top row), left to right: Reedham, Norfolk; Selby, North Yorkshire, Knaresborough, North Yorkshire. Row 2, left to right: Goole, East Riding; Bopeep Junction, East Sussex; March, Cambs
Row 3, left to right, Boston, Lincs; Canterbury West and Canterbury East, Kent. Row 4 (Bottom), left to right: Hexham, Northumberland; Llanfair PG, Anglesey; Wylam, Northumberland
Technological developments have, however, remained a constant theme in railways as in all other forms of transport. From the 1920s, it was no longer strictly necessary for the signaller to have line of sight, as panels within the box would light up to identify exactly where the train could be found; (all that was needed was sufficient investment).
Architecturally, the 1920s amalgamation of the private companies led, on the Southern, to a distinctive art deco influenced design, called Streamline Moderne (below).
The Second World War led to reinforced flat roofs and brick build to remove the risk of fire from wooden structures.
When British Railways came into being in 1948, there were still over 10,000 mechanical boxes in existence, but the rate of technological changes increased rapidly. By the 1960s, just four modern boxes controlled all movements between say, Warrington and Motherwell, a distance of some 200 miles. And now, with digitalisation we are moving to an era of Railway Operating Centres (ROC), when, for example, a signaller in Cardiff controls the trains between Chester and the North Wales Coast.
Examine a railway map of the UK and one sees immediately that older signal boxes are now geographically peripheral. In England, go to Cornwall, to Sussex (Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, and Hastings, for example), to Kent (Deal, Sandwich, Minster), to Norfolk (King’s Lynn area), to Lincolnshire (Ancaster to Boston and Skegness), the Cumbrian Coast from Carnforth to Carlisle or north from Settle through the Pennines to the Scottish border.
Wales proves similar, with boxes remaining beyond Llanelli to Carmarthen, or Llandudno to Holyhead; Scotland, too: from Stranraer to Ayr, and along the coast from Dundee towards Aberdeen.
There are surprising clusters of boxes remaining however, for instance the line connecting East Anglia with the Midlands, linking Felixstowe and its container trains to the bulk of the country. Between Manea (west of Ely) and Frisby to the east of Leicester, there are no less than 15 signal boxes. It is not uncommon to find trains following each other every few minutes.
To stand near the Frisby box is to hear what seems like the continuous ringing of bells. Not for the signaller the song of birds, but brief moments of silence between either passing cars or warning bells. On this line the signaller is often hard put to note and respond to the rush of messages relayed from adjoining boxes.
Of all the buildings developed specifically for the railways, the signal box holds a special place as the railway artefact most instantly recognisable in the landscape. Signal boxes have become a staple of heritage lines, helping to recreate an idyllic view of England. Network Rail has also cooperated with Historic England to produce an inventory of over 150 listed boxes (some part of larger complexes), 86 of which are still used for their original purpose (https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-signal-boxes/).
Nowadays, less than 200 working signal boxes remain, and by 2050 there will probably only be those boxes which control trains and boats on the Norfolk Broads, at Reedham and at Somerleyton. Or will a local group, determined to maintain their local heritage, ensure that those remaining today will still be there, a graceful or intriguing memorial to our railway heritage?
Image: North Norfolk Railway