Enthusiast recaptures golden memories from childhood by saving 121-year-old piece of railway history

Martin Slack

WHEN railway enthusiast Stephen Randolph told his family he wanted to recapture a little bit of his childhood, they may have forgiven him for buying a model train set.

But instead of buying a table top track the 60-year-old ended up moving a redundant signal box and a full-size signal from Gloucestershire to his home near Sheffield.

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Mr Randolph roped in help from his friends to dismantle the building and loaded up a van for the 120-mile rescue effort which has left the box in pride of place in his garden.

The signal box, which is 121 years old, had been a fixture in the village of Tetbury, in the heart of the Cotswolds, since the golden age of steam, but was facing demolition.

Mr Randolph was born and brought up in a house next to Tetbury’s railway station and said when he heard of the building’s plight he felt that he had to do something to save it.

The building had been moved from the side of the railway into a private garden in the village, but the owner had said they wanted to dispose of it and were about to break it up.

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If that had been allowed to happen it would have ended up on the council tip, so Mr Randolph and his team from Barlow, between Chesterfield and Sheffield, took action.

After taking two days to dismantle it piece by piece with the help of his son Peter, 18, and friends, he transported the unusual flat-pack back to the garden of his terrace house.

He spent over a year painstakingly restoring it to its former glory so that now it evokes memories of the days when he used to watch trains from his home as a young boy.

Mr Randolph and his friends have painted the 9ft by 8ft, 12ft high box in its original colours, and with the full-size signal outside it houses his collection of signalling memorabilia.

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He said he felt a sense of achievement at the operation and added: “I was brought up in Tetbury next to the station but the box, which was built in 1889, was taken out of commission before I was born.

“With the station so close I was always interested in railways as a boy and the signal box was in a garden in the village all the time I was growing up.

“I still have strong connections with the area and I visit regularly so when I discovered the new owners of the house wanted to get rid of the signal box I offered to take it off their hands and they jumped at the chance.

“We took it to pieces, put it in a van and brought it home and then set about rebuilding it. Some of the bits had to be replaced but about 80 per cent is original.

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“Now I have painted it up it should last for many years. It’s only about nine foot by eight so it doesn’t take up too much room and it blends in very well with the surroundings.

“My neighbours like it and even my wife likes to go in it sometimes.”

Several groups of rail enthusiasts have saved decommissioned signal boxes in the last few years, many of which have become redundant after signalling modernisation by Network Rail.

A few years ago the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway moved the old Sleights Sidings East signal box, located in Pinxton on the Nottinghamshire-Derbyshire border, so that it could be used as a demonstration signal box for Bolton Abbey station.

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The 60 tonne artefact had to be sliced in two for the operation.

Last December, model railway enthusiasts in Bognor Regis, Sussex, bought a signal box which was to be broken up and put it on a lorry to be towed two miles to a new site in Bognor Regis.

Meanwhile, a group in Romsey in Hampshire opened a working railway museum using the signal box in their town, which closed as a result of British Rail works in the early 1980s. It had been scheduled for demolition, but the local buildings preservation trust stepped in and bought it.