Listed status for Blackburn signal box

Posted on by Listify Me

Listed status for Blackburn signal box

4:00pm Thursday 28th November 2013 in News

The signal box at Daisyfield

THE signal box at Blackburn’s Daisyfield Junction has been given Grade Two listed status.

The box is one of 14 across the north of England to be offered the protection by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Adjacent to the Moss Street level crossing, it was built in 1873 for the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway by Saxby and Farmer.

The Type Six signal box survived the closure of the station in 1958 and was modernised with new windows, stairs and a toilet extension in 2007.

Alan Benson from STELLA, Save The East Lancashire Line Assoc-iation, said: “It’s good that it has been given this status but I wonder what the point is if it’s not going to be used.

“These boxes should be used all the time and if it’s just going to stand there then I don’t see the point of it being there at all.”

The status comes as a result of the final phase of a joint English Heritage and Network Rail project to safeguard the nation’s railway heritage.

The two-year project to seek out the best examples of signal box design around the country brings the number of listed boxes to more than 100.

Heritage Minister Ed Vaizey said: “Our interest in everything to do with trains and railways, and the ‘golden age’ of steam in particular, is one of our most endearing and enduring national preocc-upations.”

Installed from the mid-19th century onwards, signal boxes numbered around 10,000 at the peak of their use in the 1940s.

Today, fewer than 500 are still in use.

John Minnis, senior investigator at English Heritage, said: “The listings will ensure that many of these distinctive designs, which were full of character, are protected for years to come.”

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Comments (8)

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1:21am Fri 29 Nov 13

woolywords

says…

Whoa there, hold your horses..
This signal box is on the Carlisle-Settle route, out of Lancashire, Where steam trains run every Summer, for the pleasure of both ramblers and anoraks. To even suggest that it is to close, is to create an whole tsunami of complaints, from far and distant lands.
Within my lifetime, Dr Beeching tried to close it, then BR, but the former Conservative MP, Michael Portillo, whispered in Margaret Thatchers ear, that it was worth saving, and so it was.
Catching that steam train from Blackburn to Carlisle, is one of the few pleasures that us old ‘uns, enjoy. (Apart from the fact that I can get lunch with my family at Carlisle and return with some freshly baked scones and rock buns.)
Preserving this signal box, (which features on my brothers train set in his attic,) the line itself and the utterly unique steam trains that run upon it, is to keep alive the very essence of what put the Great into Britain, in that era.
You really have never lived, until you travelled upon that train, breathing in, smoke and steam and the fresh air of that journey.
Whilst some may say that they belong in a museum but, and you have to trust me on this, absolutely nothing, compares to being aboard it. Being on a steam train, defines you, as a man.
Shilbottle coal, hewn by hand, from deep under the ground. The engine, crafted with what is, the very best of British engineering and on lines, the very essence of bi-metal steels, that cover the globe, with a gauge that is the standard, in places as far afield as Rangoon and Singapore.
The Blackburn end of the Carlisle-Settle railway is, the epitome of all that British engineering and craftsmanship, has given to this country and, by dint of that, to the World. It’s not as famous by association with names like, Telford nor Brunel but stands, as a monumental testament, to the skills those other engineers, of lesser standing in the history books. Yet, in of itself, is a massive feat of works, that should be preserved as part of our heritage, for as long as we are able.
Bulldoze Stonehenge, or better yet, build a sink council house estate, (as it’s already been built upon), at Avebury, if you want to destroy the heritage of this country.
To be honest, I’ve no problem with how many mosque/madrassas are built here but, when you decide to destroy my heritage, that, which gave you, both an ideal of self-improvement and democracy, (which is sadly lacking), you really bring out in me, the Little Britain.
It is far too easy to quote (Ezekiel 18:20), that the sins of the fathers, are visited upon the sons, but there comes a time when, even the lowliest of men state, this is, one step, too far.
In fact, many grown men, including me, have a certain love of the things from our childhood. We’ve given up the Black and White Minstrels, golliwogs and all the terms that you find offensive but, you really cannot grasp the concept that, grown men, of various ages, truly love playing with steam trains. It’s almost visceral with them, as a last attachment to a bygone age.
You accept a town that gave you, ring spinning, powered machine looms and a weaving industry, that caused crisis in your home countries, much as we, with massive chagrin, accept you here. Yet now that you are here, seek to deny us, the very memory of what made us, what we all are, Englishmen.
Or would you deny us that, even though that you are born here, cared for, from birth, then educated, to where you are now, an Englishman, our rights to treasure, with a certain passion, our heritage?
If the obliteration of all past things, is your mission, why not have the gonads to own up, state that, your one true purpose is to see, all things haram, changed to halal. Much as you did here..
https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=xYYBlPWY
b7Y

and the more that you people do this, the greater the groundswell of the resistance.
For we know you, for what you are, seeking a worldwide caliphate of islam…
Feel free to deny this fact, and by doing so, what is written in your own books.
Am not EDL nor Nazi, nor any other combination of letters that you seek, to justify your cause..
Am but a man, alone, in a wilderness of hatred that YOU created, in a land that lived peacefully, for decades of years. Yet now, you, the Johnny come lately, seek to bend my will, to yours, with some half-witted ideology of a religion. I think not!
I’ve read your books, know you, for what you truly are and knowing that, will speak out at every given opportunity, to expose you.
I will be heard in the 100’s!

Feel free, to have me both drugs tested and breathalysed, before speaking, as I know it’s you normal response to those that speak a truth.

Whoa there, hold your horses..
This signal box is on the Carlisle-Settle route, out of Lancashire, Where steam trains run every Summer, for the pleasure of both ramblers and anoraks. To even suggest that it is to close, is to create an whole tsunami of complaints, from far and distant lands.
Within my lifetime, Dr Beeching tried to close it, then BR, but the former Conservative MP, Michael Portillo, whispered in Margaret Thatchers ear, that it was worth saving, and so it was.
Catching that steam train from Blackburn to Carlisle, is one of the few pleasures that us old ‘uns, enjoy. (Apart from the fact that I can get lunch with my family at Carlisle and return with some freshly baked scones and rock buns.)
Preserving this signal box, (which features on my brothers train set in his attic,) the line itself and the utterly unique steam trains that run upon it, is to keep alive the very essence of what put the Great into Britain, in that era.
You really have never lived, until you travelled upon that train, breathing in, smoke and steam and the fresh air of that journey.
Whilst some may say that they belong in a museum but, and you have to trust me on this, absolutely nothing, compares to being aboard it. Being on a steam train, defines you, as a man.
Shilbottle coal, hewn by hand, from deep under the ground. The engine, crafted with what is, the very best of British engineering and on lines, the very essence of bi-metal steels, that cover the globe, with a gauge that is the standard, in places as far afield as Rangoon and Singapore.
The Blackburn end of the Carlisle-Settle railway is, the epitome of all that British engineering and craftsmanship, has given to this country and, by dint of that, to the World. It’s not as famous by association with names like, Telford nor Brunel but stands, as a monumental testament, to the skills those other engineers, of lesser standing in the history books. Yet, in of itself, is a massive feat of works, that should be preserved as part of our heritage, for as long as we are able.
Bulldoze Stonehenge, or better yet, build a sink council house estate, (as it’s already been built upon), at Avebury, if you want to destroy the heritage of this country.
To be honest, I’ve no problem with how many mosque/madrassas are built here but, when you decide to destroy my heritage, that, which gave you, both an ideal of self-improvement and democracy, (which is sadly lacking), you really bring out in me, the Little Britain.
It is far too easy to quote (Ezekiel 18:20), that the sins of the fathers, are visited upon the sons, but there comes a time when, even the lowliest of men state, this is, one step, too far.
In fact, many grown men, including me, have a certain love of the things from our childhood. We’ve given up the Black and White Minstrels, golliwogs and all the terms that you find offensive but, you really cannot grasp the concept that, grown men, of various ages, truly love playing with steam trains. It’s almost visceral with them, as a last attachment to a bygone age.
You accept a town that gave you, ring spinning, powered machine looms and a weaving industry, that caused crisis in your home countries, much as we, with massive chagrin, accept you here. Yet now that you are here, seek to deny us, the very memory of what made us, what we all are, Englishmen.
Or would you deny us that, even though that you are born here, cared for, from birth, then educated, to where you are now, an Englishman, our rights to treasure, with a certain passion, our heritage?
If the obliteration of all past things, is your mission, why not have the gonads to own up, state that, your one true purpose is to see, all things haram, changed to halal. Much as you did here..
https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=xYYBlPWY
b7Y

and the more that you people do this, the greater the groundswell of the resistance.
For we know you, for what you are, seeking a worldwide caliphate of islam…
Feel free to deny this fact, and by doing so, what is written in your own books.
Am not EDL nor Nazi, nor any other combination of letters that you seek, to justify your cause..
Am but a man, alone, in a wilderness of hatred that YOU created, in a land that lived peacefully, for decades of years. Yet now, you, the Johnny come lately, seek to bend my will, to yours, with some half-witted ideology of a religion. I think not!
I’ve read your books, know you, for what you truly are and knowing that, will speak out at every given opportunity, to expose you.
I will be heard in the 100’s!

Feel free, to have me both drugs tested and breathalysed, before speaking, as I know it’s you normal response to those that speak a truth.
woolywords

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