The Great Northern was known for its Stirling 8ft Single Wheelers, the 'Flying Scotchman' and Stoke Bank, but it also had its somersault signals.This book puts the story of that distictive semaphore firmly into a broad historical picture, examining in detail all aspects of GNR signalling from 1848 to 1923. The company used contractors for the majority of this work, and the variety of equipment which resulted from this policy makes this history particularly inteseting. Within living memory the GNR main line between Kings Cross and Doncaster was largely as the Victorian engineers left it in the 1890s and only in the 1970s did modernisation destroy that legacy.Very little ex-GNR equipment now survives, but for all those who remember the sights and sounds of mechanical signalboxex,as well as those who want to know more about how railway safety was maintained before colour-lights and computers, this book should prove absorbing.
Hardcover, 128 pages, 163 b/w illustrations, numerous drawings.
The front cover has a very small mark, otherwise the book is fine.