Moving the lantern

Due to the absence of an operable turntable at the end of the line, our local preserved railway can’t turn its big engines round when they reach Oxenhope. This means that although the engine faces forward to pull its carriages from Keighley to Oxenhope, for the return journey it has to be shunted and coupled up the other way round. This results in the engine still being at the front of its load, but it actually runs the length of the line as though in reverse and steams into Keighley tender first! Understandably some first time visitors to the line seem to find this rather strange! But whichever way the engine is coupled to its carriages, there will always be a lantern to indicate the direction of travel. Locos and rolling stock were all obliged to carry lamps at the front and back, with white light indicating the front and red the rear. Many lamps had a twist lens so that they could show red or white, as needed. In the picture, the engine is coupling up for the ‘reverse’ journey, Oxenhope to Keighley, and one of the footplatemen is moving the white lantern, which would have been on the nose of the engine for its trip up the line, to place it on a hook on the tender to indicate that the train is about to travel in that direction. A red lantern would be placed on the rear of the last carriage of the train. The placement of the lanterns is a legal requirement and was once a very important safety factor, especially on Freight trains, when it was vital that the red was visible to the signalman when the train passed a signal box, so that he could see that the full haul was still intact and no wagons had become split and left to block the track.
PS. Don’t you just love his authentic ‘British Railways’ cap?