I am not at all sure how we got into

Leicester yard to take this photograph but my contemporary notes describe how we managed to get to the signal in some detail! My words say how we slowly walked along a path next to the lines in the shadow of a slow-moving tanker train, that can be seen behind the signal, thus hiding us from the station and the signalman in North box. While I do not condone these actions some forty years on I am really pleased that this photograph was the result. It shows a very rare ex-Midland lower quadrant semaphore that was still in use mounted on an original wooden post complete with a very ornate finial. Even back in 1980, this pre-grouping piece of operational infrastructure was at least sixty years old but probably considerably more.