A semaphore idyll
An early home-developing effort, dating from September 2011. The line in the foreground was part of the Brandon Down Goods Loop, with the running lines (Ely - Norwich) off to the left. The footbridge at Brandon station can be seen in the distance. The goods loop was seldom used, but came into its own about five years later when trains began to arrive two or three times a week in connection with the extension of the runway at RAF Marham. The signal on the right is very enjoyable and appears to be of timber construction. I took a close-up, but unfortunately double-exposed. It looks as though a finial may have been sawn off. Barbarians. Yes, I'm afraid I was trespassing. The line hereabouts had not ...and, as far as I know, still hasn't... succumbed to palisade fencing; it was mostly of old-fashioned wooden posts and wire. I behaved, of course, with the utmost safety-consciousness. Until not long before this we had been able to enjoy one of the lost pleasures of rail travel ...observing the soothing swoop of the wires between telegraph poles. I'd come down here one day and found a great heap of the telegraph poles, complete with ceramic insulators, abandoned at the side of the line. Weeks later I saw them driven through Brandon on the back of a lorry. The line was re-signalled a year or two after this was taken.
A semaphore idyll
An early home-developing effort, dating from September 2011. The line in the foreground was part of the Brandon Down Goods Loop, with the running lines (Ely - Norwich) off to the left. The footbridge at Brandon station can be seen in the distance. The goods loop was seldom used, but came into its own about five years later when trains began to arrive two or three times a week in connection with the extension of the runway at RAF Marham. The signal on the right is very enjoyable and appears to be of timber construction. I took a close-up, but unfortunately double-exposed. It looks as though a finial may have been sawn off. Barbarians. Yes, I'm afraid I was trespassing. The line hereabouts had not ...and, as far as I know, still hasn't... succumbed to palisade fencing; it was mostly of old-fashioned wooden posts and wire. I behaved, of course, with the utmost safety-consciousness. Until not long before this we had been able to enjoy one of the lost pleasures of rail travel ...observing the soothing swoop of the wires between telegraph poles. I'd come down here one day and found a great heap of the telegraph poles, complete with ceramic insulators, abandoned at the side of the line. Weeks later I saw them driven through Brandon on the back of a lorry. The line was re-signalled a year or two after this was taken.