Signalman’s Trilogy

Adrian Vaughan, born in Reading in January 1941, fell in love with the entire spectacle of the steam railway. It was the Greatest Free Show on Earth. It had drama, it had wonderful peace and relaxation, it was musical and it had poetry – to those lucky enough to be able to appreciate it. Signalman’s Morning is the first of a trilogy tracing a love affair with the coal-fired railway, from love at first sight in 1945 to divorce in 1975. In Signalman’s Twilight, the second part of his trilogy, Adrian continues the story of his railway life in rural West Berkshire, moving from Uffington signal box to that at Challow early in 1962. Signalman’s Nightmare is the third volume of Adrian Vaughan’s memories of his career on the Western Region of British Railways. The book begins in 1962 at Challow. For three years he worked at Uffington, and from Uffington he moved to Oxford’s signal boxes in 1968. In 1973, assailed once more by automation, he headed westwards into Somerset. The Somerset Railway was idyllic but times they were a-changin’. Another automation scheme was impending, Adrian had no intention of taking up a post in that and then, in the sweltering heat of the summer of ’75 he made one last mistake …