Chapel-en-le-Frith signal box

Image: © Alan Murray-Rust Taken: 25 Oct 2015

Complete with semaphore up starter and down home signals. The signals are in the 'off' position because the signal box is not manned on Sundays. The signal box was constructed in 1957 after the previous one (located to the left of the picture) was demolished by a runaway freight train in February of that year. The accident resulted from the failure of a steam pipe which made the steam brake inoperative, and despite the efforts of the driver, John Axon, to control the train, it gathered speed on the gradient and ran into the back of another freight train travelling towards Manchester. Axon and the guard of the other train, John Creamer, died in the accident, and Axon was posthumously awarded the George Cross. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Axon http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4718738 Prompt action by other railwaymen ensured that the passengers of a Buxton-bound diesel train also standing in the station were evacuated before the collision, although in practice that train was only lightly damaged.

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