Down memory line

Took a trip down memory lane today by visiting Romsey signal box, a restored artifact of the town’s railway history as an important junction on the old ‘Sprat and Winkle’ line.
These days it is classed as a working museum, as a fully working example of a railway signal box, although it is no longer connected to the railway network.
The signal box and the site has been given a makeover since I was last here, thanks largely to grants from The Heritage Lottery Fund, the local Test Valley Borough Council and a contribution by new home developer Croudace which has built new houses and apartments on land which was once a school adjacent to the signal box.
The makeover has included a new visitor centre, reception and display area as well as improvements to the site.
The signal box itself dates from 1865 when the railway was built between Eastleigh and Salisbury through Romsey, along with a line from Andover to Southampton through Romsey, known at the time as the old ‘Sprat and Winkle’ line.
The signal box became redundant in 1982 and was rescued from the threat of demolition by the Romsey and District Buildings Preservation Trust which moved it to its present site alongside the actual railway, but in the grounds of the town’s old infants school. With it is a short section of track, with working points and signals, all controlled from the signalbox which is complete with its levers as a working signalbox would have been before it was de-commissioned.

My occasional visits stirs the memory, having been brought up in a railway family and my dad used to work a signal box very similar to this one in another part of Hampshire, at Alresford on the line between Winchester and Alton and which is now the Watercress Line Preservation railway.