LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Nuneaton
LMS Route: Birmingham New Street to Tamworth

Midland Railway Miscellaneous: mr-misc001

Illustration of the variety of the oil lamps employed along the route between Castle Bromwich and Stockingford. John Griffiths writes 'As lampman I was responsible for all signal lamps in an area. There was a small lamp hut with a 45 gallon drum of paraffin at each location.

For each lamp I had to clean the glasses, trim their wicks and fill them with two pints of Paraffin. Then I would climb up to the top of each signal post or gantry (I could manage two in each hand, not easy climbing a moving swaying ladder clinging on only by your wrists as two fingers were required for each lamp.) When you were at the top you could lean back into the hoop at the ladder top and balance the lamp(s) on top of the ladder while you took out the old lamp and cleaned the bulls-eye glass and the small rear tell tale glass. The tell tale glass got covered by a small arm that worked with the main arm so that when it went "out" the signalman knew the signal was off. This was not of course necessary if the signal was facing the box. You then put the new lamp in. Two pints of paraffin lasted one week so they had to be attended to every seven days and no longer. If any went out the signalman would called me out to relight them.

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