27 May 2026 Signalling Topics

Presenter: Peter Gibbons

Signalling is essential to the operation of a safe and reliable railway but has often been neglected as the main topic of presentations.  Chichester Branch went some way towards addressing this when it welcomed Peter Gibbons, a retired railwayman and now a volunteer signaller on the Severn Valley Railway, to give our last presentation of the season before our summer break.

Peter’s original ambition to become a train driver was thwarted by not having the high standard of unaided vision then required and so he embarked on a career path in the signalling grades that took him to several boxes in the Kent, Sussex and Surrey areas. He was able to illustrate his talk with detailed pictures taken inside all the boxes he worked in and backed up by an excellent knowledge of their operation.

Peter covered the development of signalling from the rudimentary rule book of the Eastern Counties Railway - designed for an era of low adult literacy - through to the sophisticated signalling in place today.  The impact that modernisation has had on railway signalling was eloquently explained by Peter when he charted the decline of the traditional box.  In 1960 there were 237 boxes on the Central Division of BR’s Southern Region; in 2025 just 12 remained together with two signalling centres and the Three Bridges ROC.

A thoroughly absorbing talk from a very knowledgeable presenter who we hope to see again.