Lowdham signal box successfully preserved as museum for public to enjoy

A signal box has been successfully preserved as a museum for the public to visit.

Volunteers have finished restoring Lowdham signal box to its former glory after it was decommissioned in 2016.

Its closure meant four possible outcomes for the landmark ­— left to rot, be demolished, given to a heritage railway or preserved at Lowdham.

David Moore, a trustee of Lowdham Railway Heritage, was one of several individuals who helped save the signal box.

He said: “The reason I wanted to preserve it was because I wanted a museum that would be representative of a whole way of life that is disappearing.

“Between the wars there were probably between 10,000 and 15,0000 small signal boxes on the network, and with three signalmen per signal box that’s nearly 50,000 people, but now there are now less than a 100 mechanical signal boxes on network rail.”

The signal box recently reopened as a museum thanks to hundreds of volunteering hours.

It will open on a monthly basis.

David said: “Although there are signal boxes that are beautifully preserved on heritage railways you can’t visit them because they are controlling trains.

“So I thought that there was a real need for a signal box that was open to the public that actually shows people what it was like to be a signalman and gives them the chance to be hands on and pull the levers and ring the bells.”

The museum is proving popular with the public, and has been visited by former signal men and their families.

One couple visited the signal box, and the lady introduced herself as a daughter of a Lowdham signalman who worked there from 1968 until 1977.

David said: “Her family lived in the Station House at Lowdham, which is now my house, and she had her 21st birthday party in what is now my lounge.

“Then when they were doing some modernising in 1977, replacing the old Victorian equipment with some 1970s plastic equipment, he asked if he could keep some of it, which they’ve still got, and as a family they have all decided that they would like to give it to us.”

The following day, a former signalman of the 1950s now in his 90s visited the museum and shared photographs of the similar signal box he worked in.

David said: “I gave him the duster, and handing him the duster is my effectively saying you’ve got control, and so he then rang the bells and the levers for a train leaving Lowdham. He left absolutely pleased, grinning from ear to ear.”

As the current resident of the Station House, David has sold part of the garden so that the signal box is on it’s own piece of land.

This will ensure the signal box responsibility falls to the Lowdham Railway Heritage charity and not the resident of Station House.