Tuesday, September 06, 2022

The lost signal boxes of March

March in Cambridgeshire was a railway town and home to Whitemoor, the largest railway marshalling yard in the country.

After Whitemoor closed in 1990 a prison was built on part of the site, which is as good a metaphor for the effect of the Conservative governments of that era as you wull find. More recently, the railway has re-established a presence there.

The town's station once had seven working platforms, but can now manage with two

The line to Spalding, which I travelled on as a student, closed in 1982 and will not reopen. There is more hope that the line to Wisbech will be restored, but the government has lost its enthusiasm for such schemes and I am not optimistic.

This video shows us all March's signal boxes, of which only two remain in operation. Some of the photography is beautifully atmospheric.

2 comments:

Frank Little said...

The appointment of Anne-Marie Trevelyan as Transport Secretary is not promising.

Jonathan Calder said...

The idea of turning the clock back and undoing a few of Beeching's closures appealed to some Conservatives, but they lost their enthusiasm when they heard how much these schemes cost.