Railway heritage

The first Sunday of the month always rings clear in my mind , usually because it signals the monthly Farmers’ Market, but today additionally, I made a point of making a return visit to Romsey Signal Box.
It’s a railway preservation project, which centres on the town’s old signal box, and while it has a section of track alongside, it doesn’t actually run trains, but focuses on the equally fascinating aspect of railway signalling.
With cash from the Heritage Lottery Fund and support from the local Test Valley Borough Council, it is also a major visitor attraction in the town, and just recently welcomed its 10,000th visitor.
It is run by volunteers who are Friends of Romsey Signalbox, and with my own family background in railways, I am honoured to have been accepted as a ‘Friend.’  Up until the time the infamous and controversial Beeching axe fell on Britain’s network of branch lines, my dad was a railway signalman, operating a signalbox very much like the one at Romsey, but in another part of Hampshire, and now part of the Mid-Hants Railway Watercress Line. My grandfather was also a railwayman— his job was to check the track and involved walking part of the branch line track daily.
So with an affinity to railway heritage, I find each visit I make to the Romsey Signalbox fascinating, and I was delighted to be in on the end of a demonstration of the workings of railway signalling in a signalbox like this, and to see a lady visitor taking great delight in being able to operate the signals by pulling the levers which control them.
I remember my dad pulling very similar levers like this in his signalbox at Alresford, and somewhere in my archives I know I have a photograph of him doing just that.  Must try to find it!
 
Meantime, my time today spent in the sun and chatting with other ‘Friends’ brought back lots of nostalgic memories.