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Category: Signalling

This category describes any aspects of Signalling & Telecommunications at Grantham. History of Signal Boxes, signals and telecommunications are covered.

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We've just added two photographs of the 1874-1942 GNR signal box at Great Ponton.  Photographs featuring that box appear to be quite rare and we haven't had one on the website before now.  Here's a link to the page.  Scroll down to the heading 'The 1874 Signal Box'.

Published on Leave a comment on Tracks through Grantham: September 2022 Update
Above: The northbound 'Elizabethan' express from London King's Cross to Edinburgh Waverley, hauled by Haymarket A4 No. 60031 'Golden Plover' on Saturday* 14 June 1958.
© Photograph by Roger Bamber

Roger Bamber

We've been saddened to hear that our contributor Roger Bamber passed away on Sunday 11th September, aged 78.

Roger grew up in Leicester and as a boy he made several visits to Grantham station, usually cycling over the hilly A607 via Melton Mowbray.   He became a celebrated professional photographer and photojournalist whose work appeared in many national newspapers and magazines.  Roger won dozens of awards, most notably the British Press Photographer of the Year twice and News Photographer of the Year twice also.

Two years ago Roger got in touch with Tracks through Grantham from his home in Brighton to offer some of his earliest memories and photographs.  They are on our page Haymarket Rarities - captured with a plastic camera.

Several tributes to Roger and his career have appeared on the internet.  In one of them, for the Brighton paper The Argus, his wife Shan says, "Roger loved steam trains, one of the reasons he came to Sussex was for the Bluebell Railway but he ended up in Brighton and decided it was the 'best place in the world' and that's why he stayed."

There's an appreciation of Roger Bamber, illustrating the range of his work, on The Guardian website here.

Tracks through Grantham meeting, October 2022

Just a reminder about this event, which was the subject of a post circulated on Wednesday 31st August.  If you intend to join us please don't forget to let us know.

A Recently Updated Website Page

Gonerby Siding Signal Box

  • Back in March we published a new page about the box at Gonerby after Malcolm Rush told us about his visit there in January 1967 in the company of Grantham Station Manager Alec Wise.  Malcolm told us that Gonerby was the only box, of 184 that he visited, where the operator was a signalwoman.  This set us on the trail of trying to find out who this lady was.

A number of people helped, and we soon identified that she was Mrs Carter, the wife of signalman Albert Carter at Grantham South.  Then, a few weeks ago, an email arrived from George Watson who, as a boy, used to visit Gonerby box.

To read George's fascinating account go to our Gonerby Siding Signal Box page and scroll down just over halfway, to the heading Bett Carter: signalwoman at Gonerby Siding.

Recent features of interest

We keep an eye open elsewhere for items of Grantham area railway interest.  Here are some we've seen recently.

The Facebook Group Rail Thing - REAL Trainspotting (1945-1968)

Please note that the links to Facebook from this section only work if you are logged in to Facebook.

1.  Patrick Clay is posting photographs taken in the Grantham area and elsewhere by his father, John F. Clay.  Follow this link to find the Grantham area pictures, or go to the group on Facebook here and search ('search this group') for 'Patrick Clay Grantham'.

John F. Clay wrote the Foreword of Rev. A. C. Cawston's  book LNER Steam at Grantham, in which he says that as a schoolboy photographer in the 1930s he met Arthur Cawston and Thomas Hepburn on the platforms at Grantham.   In his Introduction to the same book Cawston tells us that John Clay was, for many years, a schoolmaster at Grantham.  John F. Clay's photographs have appeared in a number of books and periodicals, and he wrote an article about Grantham's railway heritage in The Railway Observer.

2.  Our regular contributor Richard Cumming has penned an absorbing account  of a visit to his Uncle Arthur on Merseyside in 1955.  Written in the same style as his popular articles for Tracks through Grantham (they're in our Spotters' Corner section), there's plenty of railway interest plus such things as his impressions of the docks and of attending Anfield to watch Liverpool FC.

Titled A train spotting holiday in Liverpool in 1955, Richard's essay can be downloaded as a Word document called 'Liverpool Holiday.docx' from here.

The Grantham Matters website:

In the past 3 months this local history website has published a few items of railway interest:

Steam World magazine:

In the current issue of Steam World is an item which might interest Tracks though Grantham subscribers:

September 2022 (Issue 423):

  • pages 26 and 27 is a photo feature titled East Coast Main Line Moments.  It's a selection of four colour photographs by Noel Ingram, prolific recorder of traffic on the East Coast Main Line between Grantham and Peterborough in the early 1960s.

Remember that you’re very welcome to stay in touch with us…

via the Tracks through Grantham website:

  • for feedback on a specific page, use the 'Comment' box under 'Leave a Reply', which appears at the bottom of most pages;
  • otherwise, use the general Contact Form found here.

All the best,

John & Mel

 

Published on Leave a comment on Tracks through Grantham: April 2022 Update
Above: The Nottingham branch at Gonerby Hill Foot from the 1929 OS 25-inch map showing the track layout at Gonerby Sidings between 1913 and January 1968.

Our April Meeting

Owing to personal circumstances we've postponed the meeting scheduled for 20th April.  We hope to hold it in the late spring or early summer.

A New Page

As we announced in the previous News item we've published a new page:

If you have information or photographs you can share with us about the railway in the vicinity of Gonerby please get in touch.

Some Updated Pages

However, several people have reported difficulty with slow loading of pages, and we're thankful for this feedback too.  The problem may be associated, to some extent, with the migration of the website to https:// which we carried out a few days after the launch of the new page.  It could also be connected with this page, as first published, being very long with multiple images.  We have therefore divided the content into three consecutive pages, with links to enable easy progress from the 'introduction' to 'part 1' (midnight to noon) and then on to 'part 2' (noon to midnight).

  • The RAF wartime career of Sydney Harmston, a clerk in the Stationmaster's Office, took him to Yugoslavia as a specialist in codes and cyphers.  It's newly featured in The Railway at Grantham in Wartime, 1939-1945  at item 4 (scroll down to halfway).

Steam World No. 418, April 2022

This latest issue of Steam World magazine has recently arrived and in it there’s a four-page photo feature (pages 24-27) titled Essendine to Grantham in 1960/61 in which ‘Nigel Harris dips into the superb East Coast Main Line photo-archive of the late Noel Ingram…’

 This is ‘Part 1’ and the photos are all black and white; Part 2 will feature some of Noel Ingram's transparencies, but the author isn't specific about when that will appear.

Also on page 60 (lower photo), in an item called Pick’n’Mix, there’s another of Noel’s photos taken at Little Bytham – a colour one this time.

Rail-Online

In its own words, Rail-Online is a comprehensive online library of high quality railway photographs, from the 1900s to the present day.

Tony and the team are continually adding new pictures from some important collections among which are, for example, the superb photographs of TG (Gordon) Hepburn of Nottingham who made frequent visits to the Grantham area.

Below are links to 17 Grantham area photographs which appear in Rail-Online's ‘recently added’ folder:

Grantham Matters

In the past 3 months this local history website has published a few items of railway interest:

Cheers,

John & Mel

Published on Leave a comment on Track Diagrams of Five Grantham Signal Boxes in 1967- and more

One of the benefits of having an online presence at Tracks through Grantham is that it encourages collaboration with other projects where they overlap with the Grantham area's railway history.

Malcolm Rush has been in touch to tell us about an album on Flickr where he's publishing his hand-drawn signal box track diagrams, photographs and other information. 

In 1965-67 Malcolm visited nearly 200 signal boxes up and down the country.  Each visit had a purpose - to create a record of the box and the lines it controlled.  What wonderful foresight, as a 13-year-old, to record details of so many signal boxes while they remained operational!  Five of the boxes he visited were in the Tracks through Grantham area.

At Tracks through Grantham an ambition is to prepare a page on the website for every signal box in the Grantham area.  Several boxes are already covered, but in few cases have we found copies of a track diagram, a vital item in every box showing the purpose of each lever along with track circuit and other important information.  A key purpose of Malcolm's visits was to create a hand-drawn copy of the track diagram displayed in each box.  Thus his project is a perfect complement to five of our signal box pages and we're delighted to recommend it to you.

Malcolm himself explains here how his interest took root, and here is an index of all the boxes he visited. 

Thanks to the support of the then Grantham Station Manager Alec Wise, on Friday 4th January 1967 Malcolm visited the five Grantham area boxes under his supervision.  Follow the links below to find Malcolm's diagrams, notes and photographs.

Grantham area signal boxes in alphabetical order:

Gonerby Siding - a new page

Four of the above boxes were previously featured on our website, the exception being Gonerby Siding box - until  now.  Encouraged by Malcolm's project we've put that right and you'll find our new Gonerby Siding signal box page here.

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It's Sunday 27th June 1971 and Grantham Yard signal box is about to close.  Leaving the box for the last time, someone reached into a drawer or cupboard for an old scrapbook which had been lying there for years.  It contained circulars and memos received by the signalmen at the Yard Box between 1900 and 1945, each carefully pasted into a page for possible future reference.  They would be needed no more but maybe someone, someday, might be interested...

At Tracks through Grantham we have recently seen this remarkable survivor.  It truly is a fascinating archive, with many stories to tell about things that mattered to the railway and to its employees.

A new page on our website draws on this resource for the first time.  Fresh Fish Daily! is an insight into the importance of the Scotch fish traffic to the people who operated the Great Northern section of the East Coast Main Line in the early decades of the 20th century.

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We introduce the crew, their O2 locomotive and a short but intensively used section of the East Coast Main Line as we ride on the footplate with Colin Walker between Grantham South and Highdyke.  Travel back to a winter's day in the early 1960s to join them on our latest new page here.

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For nearly 100 years signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South signal box kept watch over the running lines, the yards and the sidings which lay south of the passenger station.  The box was staffed round the clock, seven days a week.  What stories it might have told of the characters who worked it, and some of the incidents they dealt with!

Although the building is long gone, former Grantham signalling staff have generously shared their memories and photographs.  We've also researched local newspapers and explored other sources to illustrate the work of signalmen and telegraph lads at Grantham South.

The stories include:

  • an insight from Victorian times into the harsh and, from a modern perspective, negligent attitude of the railway companies to the personal safety of their employees;
  • the tale of a horse which made a bid for freedom by charging along the main line as far as Great Ponton;
  • how, one September night in 1906, two men on duty at the South Box were the first to witness the Scotch mail train emerge from the darkness as it sped towards the station out of control to meet with destruction a few seconds later;
  • a surprising episode in the summer of 1911, during a national dispute over working conditions on the railways, when the South Box was surrounded by a riotous mob which had to be dispersed by police.

Read all of this and more in our latest new page Grantham South signal box - people and incidents .

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This splendid scene, captured by Tom Boustead in the early 1960s, sets Grantham's South Box in a railway  landscape that had scarcely altered for decades.  However within ten years, by the spring of 1972, the box, its signals and telegraph poles were gone, and the complex track layout had been rationalised.  The future held yet more changes in store.

After a pause to attend to other chapters in Grantham's railway story, we are returning to our illustrated history of signalling and signal boxes at Grantham with the launch of our latest new pages: Grantham South Signal Box and Grantham South Signal Box - an introduction.

The story is based on information and photographs kindly contributed over a period of time by many people.  It's about an area of the railway at Grantham that was 'off limits' to all except those who either worked on the railway or had secured official permission.  Therefore photographs, other than some taken from the Great North Road bridge, are difficult to find.  So if you have, or if you know of, pictures taken in the area between the Up and Down side goods yards and Saltersford please let us know via our Contact Us page.  One particular appeal - we haven't yet seen photographs of the Down Loop at Saltersford, installed near the water works in 1943 and taken out of use in 1968.

Published on Leave a comment on Stoke Temporary Signal Box, September to October 1978

Andy Overton has been in touch to ask if someone can help him with a piece of research on ECML signalling history from 40 years back.  Andy says:

A mystery that has defeated me for many years surrounds the 1978 works in Stoke Tunnel.  I know some bits of the story, but not all.

Here's what I know.  Between 10 September and 22 October 1978 there was single line working through Stoke Tunnel.  10/09/1978 – 30/09/1978 the Up Main was used, 01/10/1978 – 22/10/1978 the Down Main was used.  The emergency facing and trailing crossovers at Stoke were taken off control of the Ground Switch Panel and were worked from the Stoke Local Control Panel in the relay room, which was designated as a signal box for the duration of the work and called Stoke Temporary.  Additional facing and trailing crossovers, worked from Stoke Temporary, were installed north of the tunnel.  The temporary signal box also gained control of some of Grantham’s signals at Highdyke in order to fully control the single line at both ends.  The single line was fully signalled in both directions, so no Pilotman was necessary.

Now the bits I don’t know.  The Local Control Panel from the relay room had to be altered to match the altered signalling in connection with the single line working.  The story passed down to me is that the panel in the temporary box comprised this altered panel, plus ‘two extensions at each end’.  It’s the ‘extensions at each end’ bit which sits uncomfortably with me as I can’t see why the panel would need to be extended, certainly not at the Stoke end.  Altered yes, extended no.  I would dearly like to be able to question someone with first-hand knowledge of what the panel comprised of during this work to get the facts pinned down 100% correct.

If you're able to shed some light on Andy's enquiry, or if you know someone who may be able to help, please let us know using a Contact Form on our Contact Us page and we will forward your message to Andy.

Andy's page Signalling at Grantham from Doncaster Power Signal Box  can be read here, and there's a page about 'the original' Stoke box here.

This is an announcement of September 1978 from Inter City to make passengers aware of how the lowering of the track inside three tunnels on the East Coast Main Line would affect journey times over the coming months. It illustrates how the tunnels (B, C and D) were to be enlarged to allow larger continental containers (A) to pass through.
Two of the affected tunnels were either side of Grantham, at Stoke and Peascliffe, and thus under the control of Grantham signal box.
From the Local Studies Collection at Grantham Library.

Published on Leave a comment on Stoke signal box

For our latest new page we move to one of the boundaries of the Tracks through Grantham 'sphere of interest' in terms of railway geography and infrastructure.

'Stoke Bank' is a legendary location, comprehensively written into East Coast Main Line history as one of the world's most renowned railway racing stretches where speed records have been made and broken.

But what about the signal box at the start of the descent (or, equally, at the summit of the ascent from both directions)?  Many a train timer's stopwatch has clicked there, but few travellers spared much of a thought for the men on duty at Stoke box as they sped past.  Many a loco crew, short of steam on a poor engine, have been thankful when the gradient changed from adverse to favourable as they exchanged a wave with the signalman at the isolated outpost.

Derek Steptoe's evocative memories of the box introduce a fine selection of photographs by Mike Mather and Noel Ingram.