{"id":2989,"date":"2010-12-30T16:53:04","date_gmt":"2010-12-30T16:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=2989"},"modified":"2010-12-30T22:38:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-30T22:38:59","slug":"banbury-railway-station-fog-semaphore-signals-and-trainspotters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/banbury-railway-station-fog-semaphore-signals-and-trainspotters\/","title":{"rendered":"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-01.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>My train back from Cardiff yesterday ended up taking a\u00a0curious\u00a0diversionary route into Oxfordshire, with the HST ending up at Banbury station for 20\u00a0minutes before reversing out in the\u00a0opposite\u00a0direction.<\/p>\n<p>With\u00a0the station shrouded in deep fog and the silence\u00a0only\u00a0sporadically\u00a0broken by the sound of passing\u00a0freight\u00a0trains or the clunk of steam-era, mechanical\u00a0semaphore signals, it really felt like we&#8217;d entered some kind of time warp.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-08.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Not only did the station look like\u00a0something\u00a0from the 1930s, but there was an abundance of old school trainspotters scuttling around the snow covered platforms too, busily taking\u00a0pictures, noting numbers and waving at departing trains.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-02.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The original Banbury station (known as Banbury Bridge Street) opened in 1850 and sported a wooden overall roof which survived until 1953.<\/p>\n<p>By that time its\u00a0frailties\u00a0had become near-legendary, with each passing express train\u00a0threatening\u00a0to send the\u00a0wobbling\u00a0beams\u00a0crashing on\u00a0to the rails below.<\/p>\n<p>The entire station was finally rebuilt in\u00a01958 by an architect clearly rather fond of concrete.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-03.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The station still retains an air of a pre-nationalisation station,\u00a0\u00a0with a selection of \u00a0GWR-style lower quadrant semaphore signals, each still sporting a natty little finial on the top.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-04.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Photo taken out of the window of my train as we waited for the signal to change. You can just make out the signal box to the far right.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-05.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Rail staff and trainspotters wait for an inbound train to emerge from the fog at the end of the platform.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-06.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Three semaphore signals &#8211; all with finials! &#8211; guard the up line tracks.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-07.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Tripod-toting trainspotters (try saying that after a few beers) chat to a member of the station staff.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-09.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Rail enthusiasts at the end of the frozen platforms at Banbury. Nutters!<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-10.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Snapping the action,\u00a0Banbury\u00a0station.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-11.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;re off, with the semaphore\u00a0signal set to green.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/images\/banbury-railway-station-fog-12.jpg\" alt=\"Banbury railway station: fog, semaphore signals and trainspotters\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Passing the GWR Banbury signal box as our train heads on to London Paddington, in a journey that ended up taking nearly twice as long as usual\u00a0because\u00a0of the various rail works on the line.<\/p>\n<p>I didn&#8217;t really mind though as it was lovely to speed across snow covered\u00a0landscapes in a warm carriage, supping hot coffee, surfing the web and relaxing after the boozy excesses of Christmas!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/railway\/\" target=\"_blank\">More: urban75 railway section<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.urban75.net\/vbulletin\/threads\/340600-Banbury-railway-station-fog-semaphore-signals-and-trainspotters\" target=\"_blank\">Read the urban75 thread about Banbury station<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My train back from Cardiff yesterday ended up taking a\u00a0curious\u00a0diversionary route into Oxfordshire, with the HST ending up at Banbury station for 20\u00a0minutes before reversing out in the\u00a0opposite\u00a0direction. With\u00a0the station &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,193,90,15],"tags":[371,370,1200],"class_list":["post-2989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photos","category-places","category-railways","category-snow","tag-fog","tag-oxfordshire","tag-railways"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/banbury-railway-station-fog-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-Md","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2989"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2993,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2989\/revisions\/2993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}