A Sign of the Times

I thought it might be nice to have a reminder of our local, now defunct, signalbox. Level crossing gates and signals at Fiskerton have recently been automated and the old box has been decommissioned.

I wandered down there to see where they were up to. Perhaps when they tried to move it, I mused, the box board had fallen off and was just lying there waiting for me to rescue it.

A workman dressed in lurid orange said it belonged to East Midlands Trains. To cut a long story short, EMT told me it belonged to Network Rail. NR said they had a special department for that sort of thing, called Railway Recycling.  An email to them was replied to by the Redundant Assets department.

They said the box would be sold complete with its contents [to the preservation movement, one would hope], though I had noticed that the signalbox diagram had disappeared from view already. The man in orange had told me that signalmen like to have them as souvenirs of their time working there, which seems fair enough.

I was invited to put my name down for the redundant assets tender list, on the grounds that other nearby box boards may be sold separately. I have since been offered opportunities to bid for volumes of concrete sleepers and multiple signal posts.

I have also asked my wife if she has any particular design or dimensions in mind for a possible garden shed in the near future.