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The Blisworth Station main signal box These memories of Blisworth Station signal box in
the late 1950s are aimed at the general reader rather than the rail
enthusiast. I never worked officially on the railway although
several of my uncles did but I was one of numerous enthusiasts who were
privileged to enter signal boxes throughout Britain and allowed to work
under the strict supervision of the signalman. My time in the Blisworth
box was mainly with Jack Morrisroe who’s referred to elsewhere in
‘Blisworth Images’. Blisworth Station box was a Class 1 box, the
highest grade. It had 75 levers and was one of the largest on the LMS
system to be manned by only one signalman plus a booking clerk. The
levers most used were the ones at each end, numbers 1,2,3,4 and 5 for up
(towards London) main line trains and 73,74 and 75 for down (from
London) trains. The main line to and from London Euston was one of the
busiest in Britain and still is as although the network’s been
curtailed, train frequencies have increased. In the 1950s you might have
about six trains a day from Euston to Birmingham – now there’s one
about every 20 minutes. Destinations then as now included Birmingham and
Wolverhampton, Liverpool, Manchester, North Wales, the Lake District and
Scotland. Many trains had names, the most well-known being the ‘Royal
Scot’ (10 a.m. from Euston and also from Glasgow Central). But there
was also ‘The Midlander’ (Birmingham and Wolverhampton), ‘The
Irish Mail’ (twice a day to Holyhead), ‘The Welshman’ (Llandudno,
Bangor, Portmadoc and Pwllheli), ‘The Manxman’ and ‘The Merseyside
Express’ (Liverpool Lime Street), ‘The Comet’ and ‘The Mancunian
(Manchester London Road), ‘The Ulster Express’ (Heysham for the
Belfast Ferry), ‘The Northern Irishman’ (Stranraer for the Larne
Ferry) ‘The Mid-Day Scot’ (Glasgow) and ‘The Royal Highlander’
(7.15 p.m. Euston to Inverness). Most of these names are no more. There were also the up and down ‘Postals’ or
TPO (Travelling Post Office) as they were officially known. These left
Euston and Glasgow Central at 8.30 pm, consisted solely of mail vans
with teams of post office sorters on board and picked up mail bags at
speed periodically from line-side apparatus. The down ‘Postal’
passed through Blisworth around 9.40 pm and the up one around 2.45 am.
They were part of a national TPO network and the down train stopped at
Tamworth interchanging mails there with the 7.20 pm Bristol to
Newcastle. The up Postal was involved in the 1963 Great Train Robbery
near Cheddington, Bucks. There were also boat trains for Liverpool
Riverside and party specials known as ‘parspecs’, particularly from
destinations such as Alsager, Congleton and Kidsgrove on the former
North Staffordshire network and also from Lancashire towns such as
Accrington, Burnley, Haslingden and Littleborough on the former
Lancashire and Yorkshire network. On Cup Final days, especially if both
teams came from within the LMS region, it was not unusual to have 15 or
so specials heading for Wembley. On their return it was also not unusual
to receive the occasional beer-bottle thrown from a train window! Weekly supplements to the working timetable were
issued to drivers, signalmen and other key rail staff and gave details
of all specials, temporary speed restrictions and other information
which key staff needed to know. Few people had cars in the 1950s and most went on
holiday by train. So rail traffic was very busy, especially on Christmas
Eve, Maundy Thursday and on summer weekends when most trains were
‘divided’, that is they ran in two or even three parts. Over 100
trains during an eight-hour shift was commonplace and beyond Roade where
the tracks doubled to four with the Northampton line there were, of
course, far more. There were also parcel, freight, fish, milk and
newspaper trains. Several parcel trains remarshalled at Blisworth during
the night shift prior to continuing to destinations elsewhere. A
notorious freight train was the up fish train from Fleetwood to London,
passing Blisworth about 8 p.m. and nicknamed the ‘Ocean Roamers’.
This train was fully-fitted with automatic braking and ran at express
speed. The aroma in its wake gave an indication of its cargo. My knowledge of railway geography was enhanced by
my time at Blisworth. I already knew of Bushbury, the engine sheds for
Wolverhampton and of Bescot, the huge freight marshalling yard near
there, of Edge Hill and Longsight, the engine sheds for Liverpool and
Manchester respectively and of Polmadie, the engine sheds for Glasgow.
But I soon became aware of places like Adswood, the Stockport
marshalling yard from where a parcels train to London remarshalled at
Blisworth on the night shift, of Kensington Olympia and of Addison Road
which were parcel trains destinations and of Etruria to where a daily
train load of ironstone left Blisworth at the ungodly hour of 2.08 a.m.
and where I thought must be somewhere in Italy and wondered why it
travelled north, until I discovered it was in Stoke-on-Trent! Shelton
iron works have long been demolished and the site was landscaped into a
Garden Festival site some years ago. It was necessary for signalmen at key locations to
know the whereabouts of approaching trains, thus enabling them to
determine if a freight or parcels train needed to be shunted into a
loop, allowing a passenger or faster train to overtake it. There were
loops adjacent to both main lines between Blisworth and Gayton and the
start of the down loop can be seen in the foreground of photos 27-08 and
27-08a. Booking clerks at Tring and Bletchley telephoned us with passing
times of down line trains and those at Nuneaton and Rugby did similarly
for up line trains. One of the Blisworth booking clerk’s tasks was to
record this information in a register and telephone his counterparts
with information on trains passing Blisworth. The times of all trains
entering and leaving the Blisworth section and passing the box were also
recorded. All trains had numbers called reporting numbers;
odd numbers were for down trains, evens for up. Although we knew all the
regular numbers by heart, in busy times when trains might run out of
normal sequence and also for ‘specials’ the numbers were boldly
displayed on the engine boiler and were prefixed with a ‘W’ denoting
‘Western Division’ to distinguish them from ‘M’ for ‘Midland
Division’ – the Midland main line to and from St. Pancras. This
distinction was important at locations like Carlisle where the divisions
merged. The down Royal Scot was number W65 and the up Royal Scot W96.
The clerks would merely say ‘sixty-five, thirty-seven, Tring’ and
this information was sufficient. Few passenger trains stopped at Blisworth in the
1950s. The ones I recall were the 8.45 a.m. Euston to Wolverhampton
(stopping just before 10 a.m.), a 1.20 p.m. local from Bletchley to
Rugby (around 2 p.m.), the 8.30 a.m. Carlisle to Euston (just before 3
p.m.), the 6.57 p.m. local from Rugby to Bletchley (around 7.30 p.m. and
the return working from the 1.20 p.m. down train) and the 5.05 pm
Blackpool to Euston (just before 10 pm). The two-coach ‘Blisworth
Motor’, referred to elsewhere, connected with each of these, from and
to Northampton. In addition to the ‘Blisworth Motor’, a
similar motor train made a daily weekday trip from Leamington (not
Daventry as your caption to photo 27-49 suggests) to Northampton via
Weedon. On arrival at Blisworth, just before 4 pm, it would proceed to
the up main line just past the platform, stop, the signalman would
adjust the points for the Northampton branch and the train would
reverse, coach first to Northampton. The return journey left Northampton
around 6.15 p.m., engine first, and at Blisworth, provided the main
lines were clear, it would again proceed to the up main line just beyond
the platform, stop, the signalman would change the points to allow a
crossover to the down main line and the train would continue, coach
first, to Leamington. The crossover from the up to the down main line is
shown in the centre of photo 27-04. The 8.30 a.m. Carlisle train had reporting number
W74 and was very popular with Blisworth and Northampton travellers,
especially railway staff returning from holidays. It called at all major
stations to Crewe and then only Blisworth and Bletchley before arriving
at Euston around 4.20 p.m. and was usually hauled by one of the
Coronation Class Pacifics, similar to the locomotive shown in photo
27-08a. There were 38 locomotives in this class, all based at Camden,
Crewe, Carlisle or Polmadie (Glasgow) and they easily handled 16-coach
trains or heavier on the climbs over Shap and Beattock summits. Given a
clear road and a keen train crew, arrival at Blisworth could be up to 15
minutes early and having to wait for time no doubt annoyed travellers on
the 12.40 p.m. express from Manchester which normally preceded the
Carlisle train but would, in this situation, be held back by signals at
Gayton. Inside the Blisworth box, like all boxes, levers
serving different purposes had different colours. Stop signal levers
were painted red, distant signals were yellow, points were brown, point
locks were black, unused levers were white. Levers for semaphore signals
had long well-polished tops, essential if you needed to tug hard with
perhaps half a mile of coiled wire to be pulled, but those controlling
colour lights, the up Middleton intermediate block signal for example,
had shorter tops to remind one not to over-pull. On a long shelf above
the levers were the four ‘block instruments’ allowing telegraphic
communication with adjacent boxes at Roade, Gayton (two instruments –
one for the main line, one for the loops) and Rothersthorpe Crossing on
the Northampton branch. Each instrument comprised two electronic needle
indicators, the bottom one controlled by the Blisworth signalman, the
top one controlled by the signalman in the other box. The device
incorporated a gong and tapper used to communicate coded messages. Each
gong had a different tone. Having worked at the Gayton, Heyford and Banbury
Lane boxes I was already familiar with the various bell codes. Express
passenger trains were four consecutive beats; local passenger trains
were 3 beats, pause, 1 beat (3:1); parcel trains were one beat, pause,
three beats, pause, one beat (1:3:1); fully fitted freight trains were
three beats, pause, one beat, pause, one beat (3:1:1) and so on. The
philosophy was that a line was considered closed until proved to be open
and the normal position of the needle indicator was vertical (line
closed). When a train was offered and accepted, the receiving signalman
would repeat the code and set his needle to ‘line clear’ which
showed in the other box and allowed the signalman there to clear his
signals. On entering your section, the other signalman sent a two beat
signal (train entering section) and the receiving signalman changed his
indicator to ‘train on line’. As trains passed, you sent a ‘train
entering section’ code to the box in advance and when the train had
passed complete with tail lamp you sent a ‘train out of section’
code to the box in the rear and returned your indicator to the original
line closed position. A further train could then be ‘offered’. On the up line towards London, all trains were
offered by the Gayton signalman on the main line instrument. If the
train needed diverting into the loop, the Blisworth signalman would
accept on the loop instrument, thus authorising the Gayton man to set
the points for the loop. The loop signal, set to danger, can be seen on
the right of the cleared signals in photo 27-27. The Gayton signal box
on the up side is behind the locomotive tender. Wherever possible, boxes were situated on
alternate sides of the line. Thus Blisworth and Banbury Lane boxes were
positioned on the down side and Heyford and Gayton on the up. Rules
required signalmen to observe passing trains for any irregularities and
if, for example, a carriage door was seen to be open the train had to be
stopped and the sections of line searched. Door interlocking on modern
trains minimises this eventuality. A word about the ‘block’ system may be useful.
In the early days of railways when signalling was primitive, time was
considered an appropriate medium and if a train had passed, say, 15
minutes earlier it was deemed safe to send another one. After several
major accidents it was realised that space, not time, was a better
interval and so lines were divided into sections, controlled by
signalboxes or, on long sections, by intermediate signals (known as IBs).
Normally there could only be one train in a section at a time and this
was known as the ‘absolute’ block system. However, in order to
facilitate freight movements, a variation known as ‘permissive’
block existed whereby a freight train could be accepted on a goods line
and into a section already occupied by another non-passenger train,
provided the driver of the subsequent train was cautioned before
entering and told of a train or trains in front. The block instruments
controlling the loops at Blisworth and Gayton allowed this and
incorporated an indicator showing a number and which allowed for
occupation by up to seven trains although I never experienced more than
two. Several trains a day carrying chalk from the
Dunstable area to the cement works at Southam on the Leamington branch
passed through Blisworth. These and their return empties were regular
occupants of the goods loops. The down trains were signalled as ordinary
freight trains as far as Blisworth where the bell code was changed to
‘branch freight’, an indication to the Weedon signalman to divert
the train to the Leamington branch. Steam locomotives need water and troughs located
at Castlethorpe and elsewhere on the system allowed for water to be
picked up at high speed and using a scoop. In peak times when trains
were running with tight headways it was common for the troughs not to
have refilled sufficiently to allow the engine of a subsequent train to
obtain water in this way and consequently the train would make an
unscheduled stop at Blisworth to take on water. The water tower can be
seen to the left of the signal box in photo 27-45 and it was an
impressive sight to see one of the major expresses, perhaps hauled by a
Coronation, Princess, Royal Scot or Jubilee class engine, stopping at
Blisworth for this purpose. The task took 10 minutes or more to complete
and a sea of heads invariably appeared from compartment windows along
the train, no doubt wondering what was happening. As a result, a number
of following trains were often delayed and all this had to be reported
to the booking clerks down the line and to the train controller at
Rugby. I hope these few reminiscences are of interest. John Whitehead, Caldicot, Monmouthshire Updated March 2011 |