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Witham Bobby
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« on: July 14, 2026, 09:23:21 » |
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Fascinating. Thank you. The Manchester Ship Canal was one of the great engineering projects o the Victorian era that we studied for O-Level history. Miss Wheelton in Room 4 at Evesham High School in 1970 seems now to be of a piece with the era that we studied! |
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Chris from Nailsea
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« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2026, 10:54:21 » |
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I have taken something of a liberty here in splitting the above post off to start a new topic - simply to justify my adding my own schooldays reminiscences.  My inspiration then was not in the classroom but out in the open air. On Friday afternoons at Brislington School (Bristol), the sixth form were timetabled 'Liberal Studies' - when we could choose whichever we liked. My choice, with several others, was on the theme of industrial archeology, led by Martin 'Kipper' Lee. He had a PSV license (which he carried with pride) and thus access to the school minibus for the afternoon. He took us out to Crofton Pumping House on the Kennet & Avon Canal and the railway signal box at Ashton Gate (now long gone), for example. As the teacher in charge of a group of genuinely interested students, he was given favourable treatment and access at such sites. That is why I was given the opportunity to work a traditional signal lever in the box at Ashton Gate, on the line which was still used for goods traffic. I failed miserably, to the mirth of my fellow students and much eye rolling from the signalman and the train driver, who was waiting outside. Those were happy days. CfN▸ .   |
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William Huskisson MP▸ was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830. Many more have died in the same way since then. Don't take a chance: Stop, Look, Listen.
"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner." Discuss.
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Mark A
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« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2026, 12:33:09 » |
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'Failed' in that you hadn't yet the strength or gained the technique to move the lever?
Mark
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PrestburyRoad
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« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2026, 12:55:41 » |
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I have happy memories of the geography O level field trips from my school in London SE12. One was to Shoreham in the beautiful countryside of the Darent Valley to study the geography of the North Downs. The other was a complete contrast, to the industrial estate at Erith to see the diverse structures of modern industry. In both cases we travelled by train using the dense network of Southern Region lines. In retrospect I regard both of the trips as formative - I continue to enjoy both countryside and industrial archaeology.
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Chris from Nailsea
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« Reply #4 on: July 14, 2026, 18:37:02 » |
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'Failed' in that you hadn't yet the strength or gained the technique to move the lever?
'Failed' in the sense that I hadn't then seen the appropriate technique to be applied: I was just tugging at the lever, repeatedly. When what was required - and consequently demonstrated by the expert signaller - was one smooth pull through the whole length of its travel - with some bodyweight behind it.  |
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William Huskisson MP▸ was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830. Many more have died in the same way since then. Don't take a chance: Stop, Look, Listen.
"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner." Discuss.
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Mark A
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« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2026, 19:03:39 » |
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Ah, and I bet personal acquaintance with certain levers helps too. Well out of the coffeeshop area, I can actually remember Martin Mill in Kent where the signalling staff had a more than usually extended range of duties. Also, one of the levers operated a signal at a distance of three quarters of a mile from the box. Perhaps resulting in the strongest member of post office staff in the country. Mark
https://signalbox.org/photo-gallery/southern-railway/martin-mill/ |
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Oxonhutch
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« Reply #6 on: July 14, 2026, 22:20:52 » |
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For me it began with a lifetime of experience - all six years of them - and a small pale blue bicycle with white rubber tyres. Destination of choice was a level crossing on the old Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway at Brownedge Crossing, near Bamber Bridge, south of Preston about half a mile away - this was the mid-sixties - a different planet, I know. The roadway of the crossing was creosoted timbers that exuded a wonderful smell in the warm summers of my childhood, white gates, and sweet music of the telegraph bells coming from the adjacent signalbox. Black Fives - I was hooked. Fifty years later I became a signalman, and S&T▸ volunteer, on the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway, and relived my childhood dream. |
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chuffed
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« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2026, 06:26:49 » |
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Not quite schooldays but near enough. One of my main reasons for choosing Geography and History as my principal and subsidiary subjects in 1972 at Worcester College of Education was the time we spent out the lecture room on field trips. It was thumbs down for doing fieldwork for one of our lecturers on Bredon Hill,measuring the angle of poles stuck in the ground measuring soil creep......but it was thumbs up for visiting the very early Ironbridge museums,Black Country musuem at Dudley and the 2 Saxon churches at Deerhurst near Tewkesury.
In the 50 years since I have travelled across most of Europe,giving thanks for the geography and history, that enabled me to see how they interrelated. This culminated in the holiday of a lifetime earlier this year,when I visited Sicily..a literal melting pot of geology geomorphology and different invaders who all left their marks on the island eg A Spanish facade on an Arabic temple on Syracuse Cathedral and trips up Etna and viewing Stromboli.
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« Last Edit: July 16, 2026, 15:01:16 by chuffed »
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Witham Bobby
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« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2026, 17:10:36 » |
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I have taken something of a liberty here in splitting the above post off to start a new topic - simply to justify my adding my own schooldays reminiscences. My inspiration then was not in the classroom but out in the open air. On Friday afternoons at Brislington School (Bristol), the sixth form were timetabled 'Liberal Studies' - when we could choose whichever we liked. My choice, with several others, was on the theme of industrial archeology, led by Martin 'Kipper' Lee. He had a PSV license (which he carried with pride) and thus access to the school minibus for the afternoon. He took us out to Crofton Pumping House on the Kennet & Avon Canal and the railway signal box at Ashton Gate (now long gone), for example. As the teacher in charge of a group of genuinely interested students, he was given favourable treatment and access at such sites. That is why I was given the opportunity to work a traditional signal lever in the box at Ashton Gate, on the line which was still used for goods traffic. I failed miserably, to the mirth of my fellow students and much eye rolling from the signalman and the train driver, who was waiting outside. Those were happy days. CfN▸ . Sounds like you had a great teacher there We had Mr Lessware, who was ex- RAF▸ . He'd been in Bomber Command in WWII▸ and beyond that he told us nothing. I later learned that he was awarded a DFC As befits a pilot, he took us boys to somewhere up above Wotton-under-EDge and we had the most fantastic day out on gliders. The gliders were launched skywards on a winch. Yours truly enjoyed a couple of flights and a lot of tractor driving to recover the tow rope. Different times. I can't even begin to imagine the amount of paper that would be generated by such an excursion today If you had a go at the level crossing gates at Ashton Gate as a schoolboy, failure would not be a surprise. If memory serves, the gates were quite long and would have been heavy to swing. And, for a youngster, the levers in the frame, whatever the colour, would have been a bit heavy, I'm sure |
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CyclingSid
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« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2026, 18:58:53 » |
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Railway related school memories. The Shoreham (Sussex) toll bridge, have never found out why railway staff collected the tolls (same at Hayling Island). Once again the smell of creosote on a wooden bridge in summer. Closely connected to the Shoreham to Christ's Hospital branch, in its last throes. The Beeding cement works up the valley and the geology connected with, good for the chalk with clay coming by underground pipeline from Henfield (?).
Doing my cadet force Cert T at Longmoor Military Railway. A week "playing" with signal boxes (and levers), ground frames, loose shunting in the marshalling yard (the shunting pole was some way taller than me) and driving a small diesel engine on a non-passenger service. And more, a week of bliss, as said I hate to think of the elf and safety paperwork now, even if we had the infrastructure.
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Chris from Nailsea
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« Reply #10 on: July 15, 2026, 22:58:29 » |
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My inspiration then was not in the classroom but out in the open air. On Friday afternoons at Brislington School (Bristol), the sixth form were timetabled 'Liberal Studies' - when we could choose whichever we liked. My choice, with several others, was on the theme of industrial archeology, led by Martin 'Kipper' Lee. He had a PSV license (which he carried with pride) and thus access to the school minibus for the afternoon. He took us out to Crofton Pumping House on the Kennet & Avon Canal and the railway signal box at Ashton Gate (now long gone), for example. As the teacher in charge of a group of genuinely interested students, he was given favourable treatment and access at such sites. That is why I was given the opportunity to work a traditional signal lever in the box at Ashton Gate, on the line which was still used for goods traffic. I failed miserably, to the mirth of my fellow students and much eye rolling from the signalman and the train driver, who was waiting outside. Those were happy days. CfN▸ . Sounds like you had a great teacher there. If you had a go at the level crossing gates at Ashton Gate as a schoolboy, failure would not be a surprise. If memory serves, the gates were quite long and would have been heavy to swing. And, for a youngster, the levers in the frame, whatever the colour, would have been a bit heavy, I'm sure. I hate to think of the elf and safety paperwork now, even if we had the infrastructure. I have quoted selectively above, just so I can cover a few points. Yes, Martin Lee was a brilliant teacher, very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about industrial archaeology - but I never found out why he was nicknamed 'Kipper'. I just went along with others, who all knew him affectionately as 'Kipper Lee'. None of us had a go at moving the level crossing gates, but we were all invited up into the signal box to actually operate the levers.- that would be impossible now, allowing a group of 17-year-olds to do that. The Elf-n-Safety paperwork prohibiting it would indeed run into hundreds of pages! For me, the rather embarrassing aspect of my inability to work a signal lever there was that my girlfriend at the time was one of those fellow students laughing at my ineptitude.  |
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William Huskisson MP▸ was the first person to be killed by a train while crossing the tracks, in 1830. Many more have died in the same way since then. Don't take a chance: Stop, Look, Listen.
"Level crossings are safe, unless they are used in an unsafe manner." Discuss.
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GBM
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« Reply #11 on: July 20, 2026, 11:27:21 » |
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Doing my cadet force Cert T at Longmoor Military Railway. A week "playing" with signal boxes (and levers), ground frames, loose shunting in the marshalling yard (the shunting pole was some way taller than me) and driving a small diesel engine on a non-passenger service. And more, a week of bliss, as said I hate to think of the elf and safety paperwork now, even if we had the infrastructure.
Wow, a fellow Cadet at Longmoor! I also had a week there. Loved the O gauge layout for signal training in the Longmoor box. (Was it the Longmoor box, or was there another box at Longmoor station as well)? Think my highlight was being allocated to one of the small steam tanks one morning. Being enthusiastic I arrived very early, well before the military crew arrived. One the footplate, another military guy came up from the engine behind and asked me to move forward 100 yards so he could get out before 'us'. Took the engine forward and stopped when he shouted to. They then went out on their duty. A short while later my crew arrived for their duty. As said above, that could never happen again these days with all the paperwork. |
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CyclingSid
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« Reply #12 on: July 20, 2026, 16:54:50 » |
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Loved the O gauge layout for signal training in the Longmoor box.
(Was it the Longmoor box, or was there another box at Longmoor station as well)? The layout was in the signal school along the road to Liphook on the right before Longmoor Bridge. The layout apparently went to the Army School of Transport museum, as did the German sleeper ripper. Not sure if the Army School of Transport museum has survived much defence cost-cutting since. The Longmoor box was in the middle of the platform of Longmoor Downs station. Levers on the first floor and all the interlocking on the ground floor. I think Longmoor Downs box looked a bit like an economy version of the Southern style boxes. |
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