News 2026

June - July BOX REPAINT

 The southern end and steps of the box being cleaned and scraped down on June 17th.

  and on the stairs:
  But at the top of the stairs some damaged wood has been     exposed which is going to need replacement:
 ​Our canny painters are keeping in the shade of the box in the present hot weather, so our last picture from 24th June shows them at the NE corner of the box:

 The north end of the box cleaned up and with a primer coat, as seen on Sunday 28th June.
 Also revealed is the damage by rot
to the 1st floor windows in the South end.

  On Wednesday 1st July, preparation work was going on on the East face of the box at ground and 1st floor levels.

April, May and June

Midland Railway Signal Works

One of our older signals, erected in 2013 on the lawn, was in need of some refurbishment - it's the circa 1910 MR signal.
     

Having put up our scaffold tower, the arm was removed, the post and metal parts repainted and the lamp access platform now awaits new timbers. The arm was cleaned and is seen partly repainted and then ready to put back up, which was done as can be seen in our photo on the right >

Changing gound signals
  
The Southern Railway (SR) flood-lit ground disc in the left-hand picture has been replaced by the former Cheshire Lines Committee disc seen on the right. The change was made as we have lent the SR signal to the new Haselmere signal box museum. The disc is worked from lever 27 in the box.

Class 37 passes the box:

In early May Class 37 37512, 'Thornaby Demon', passed the box hauling two South-Western Railway 701 units towards Derby for works before they enter service.

Network Rail at work
Visitors and volunteers at the box on Sunday 26th May were able to see the 'Orange Army' finishing off track work:

    
The track through the Up Fast (Platform 3) was renewed and reballested.
The strange 'vehicle' in the middle picture apparently is used to correctly stress the rails after renewal.
The final picture shows a a trailer and road/rail vehicle heading for the access point to off-load the last bits and pieces.

January to March

Thomas gets 'Lit-up'
Thomas started the New Year with a working lamp fitted on his buffer-beam. It is likely we'll similarly equip both James and Percy during this year.

The wet weather for the first two months of the year has somewhat put off work on a large scale and the sheltered work area (see 2025's newspage) has been put to good use in preparing various items.

Work has concentrated on designing and building a: New Ground Frame to work the Great Northern (Ireland) signal erected last year. At the start of March installation got under way as the weather gave us some dry days.

      
General view on the left - the work going on at the post foot is to install the chain pulley (centre). The signal was also recently given an electrically-powered lamp; part of the conduit run bringing the power is visible on the right of the photo.

The ground frame seen in close-up (right) has two levers - one for the GN(I) signal, the other will be used eventually for our upper-quadrant distant signal to be resited later this year to make room for the next restored signal.

Spring Flowers

A tribute to our volunteer gardeners - more pictures to follow.