Cock-Up

Railway people are generally very knowledgeable about their stuff. That certainly puts the pressure on when you commit to print. Get your facts straight. Every now and then, I cock-up. I described an 0-6-0 tank as an 0-6-2 in a blog and was rightly pulled up, and I was told I’d mis-identified a very dirty Standard 9F 2-10-0 from a 1964 photo, which was probably the case, too. You get the drift. You have to be spot on in this sphere and that maxim usually keeps me on my toes.

In a late-night email [I’m hardly at my sharpest then, and also partly traumatised by another Everton defeat], I mistakenly and momentarily deprived the town of Bruton of its railway station, something Dr Beeching did not actually manage to do – though it has been an unstaffed halt since 1969. My friend, John Beck, who is currently residing there, soon put me right. The present station at Bruton is nothing to write home about. It has a couple of “bus shelters” and no through trains to London Paddington, in spite of its being on the direct route to Taunton and the West Country. However, John found one of the lovely old GWR platform benches in chocolate and cream with art deco roundels. How solid and dependable they look and still so plentiful on the old Western Region.

Bruton had a modest-sized signalbox on the south side of the line, built in 1875 immediately west of the station and opposite the goods yard, now long gone. It became obsolete after 1980s re-signalling in the area. Today, there are two structures of signalbox design, one used as a garage [West End Garage, Station Yard – adjacent to the station at the west end and north of the line] and one constructed by an architect as his office and now occupied by an estate agent [Lodestone Property, Station Road - also west of the station and north of the line]. John kindly provided these splendid pictures of all three items, two of which were taken on a recent moonlit walk with Archie the dog.