My first appointment as signalman was at a pretty little country place called Wooburn Green which was situated on a single line between Maidenhead in Berkshire, and High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. This was not a very busy job and I had plenty of time to keep the lever tops polished, the lever frame cleaned with black lead and the brass signal bells and telephone bells shining bright. The signal box was on one end of the station platform while a level crossing gate, which had to be opened and closed by hand, was situated at the other end of the platform. To lock the gates against road traffic vehicles when a steam train was due, I had to walk the length of the platform, close the gates, against the road traffic, then walk back along the platform to the signalbox to operate the necessary lever. Sometimes the gates would be opened by someone who wanted to drive across before I got back to the box, so I had to dash back and close the gates again and try to avoid delay to the steam train. Sometimes this was annoying especially when it was pouring with rain. However, there was very little road traffic in that area, so things were not too bad.
While I and my family lived at Reading, I had about twenty miles to go to Wooburn Green and twenty miles back again each working day, and to do this I bought a BSA 125cc motorcycle. The signalbox was open day and night, except on Sunday night when we closed at l0pm and reopened at 4.30 am on Monday morning. Every third week I was on this late Sunday and early Monday morning duty and used to stay on the Sunday night in a rented room in the village. If I travelled all the way home and back again I would have had no more than about a couple of hours to sleep. In December 1949, however, we moved from Reading to High Wycombe, which was only a few miles from Wooburn Green.
Another job at Wooburn Green signalbox was exchange of key tokens from the train drivers as they were passing from one section to the next on the single line. The key token system originated on the Great Western Railway. An express freight train passed through every weekday evening and was called, as I remember, the '8.25 Slough'. Where it was booked to I cannot remember. It was usually quite a lengthy freight train and had to negotiate the steep and curving single line through Wooburn Green towards High Wycombe and beyond. I can remember the loud puffing made by the locomotive which could be heard from quite a distance before it came round the bend through Wooburn Green, when the locomotive fireman would lean out of the cab to exchange the single line tokens to and from the holder at the side of the line, as must with all trains on single lines.
There was a small shunting yard where a goods train, called the 'pick-up goods', came each morning during the week to set down and pick up the relevant wagons and the cross country service of passenger trains between Maidenhead and High Wycombe via Bourne End would also call at Wooburn Green. The station master, a nice old gentleman, lived in a house which was part of the station buildings on the platform. He was a keen gardener and his garden was on the bank the other side of the line, just opposite the station and signalbox. While I was working there I did a correspondence course which was run by British Railway Western Region. I did most of the studies while I was in the signalbox, as I seemed to have plenty of time. I got a certificate when I successfully answered the set examination.
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