English: Midland Railway Centre, Swanwick Junction The signal box is of special interest to me. It used to be at Linby, a few metres away from where my grandparents lived. He was a signalman, but he worked the GN Linby Colliery signal box and this was on the MR. I was 'farmed out' to them on my school holidays, fairly regularly. This arrangement started about 1945, when I was three, so I had plenty of time to get interested in the railways.

At Linby, the LMS and GN ran parallel, all the way to Newstead and both were crossed by the GCR line, which ran above on a viaduct, near Linby village church. The ex-LMS line is still there and so is my grandparent's house, but all the rest has gone.

The signals here are referred to as semaphore signals and are operated by levers in a signal box. The far left signal is called a left-branch and was used to stop or signal trains into the colliery branch line, or straight on along the slow-line. The closest one to it is a home signal and is used to stop signals at the station, or allow them along the fast-line. There is another home signal on the colliery branch line, to protect trains approaching on the slow-line and there is another home signal just beyond the signal box for trains on this track, nearest the camera. The reason for that being that only this platform is used for passengers.