Stopping the 'Non-Stop'

Back in 1935 when the A4's were first introduced and the 'Silver Jubilee' started as a fast 'non-stop' service between Newcastle and London, my grandfather worked as a signalman on the main line at Tollerton - the first station north of York.

The 44 miles between York and Darlington has always been known as the 'race track' on the East Coast Main Line and at Tollerton, where there's four parallel tracks - a fast and a slow line in each direction - the 'flyer' would crank up to around the 100 mph mark. There were special rules to keep it on time. Preceding expresses had to leave an adequate margin and the train was "double blocked" on the telegraph - worked two sections ahead rather than just one to allow time to get all the signals 'off' (clear).

A couple of months after the service started my grandfather 'accepted' the train on the block telegraph one morning and 'set the road' - pulled the necessary levers to set the signals and points for the train. It was a busy day, he had two other trains to deal with at the same time.

The track there is dead straight for miles and after a few minutes he could see th e 'Non-Stop' coming. But something was very wrong. The engine was braking hard and whistling. He watched with interest and concern - "What is that fool of a driver doing?" he wondered.

He looked at his levers and track diagram again and ...!!!!. He had 'set the road' for the wrong line! By mistake he'd pulled off the signals for the slow goods line and not the parallel fast track! Like lightening he cleared the signals for the express and it accellerated away again.

But in those days they were very strict about such things and soon the inevitable forms started to arrive to check why he had slowed the train. After about a week of explanations and apologies he eventually just wrote "I made a mistake!!" and they let it go at that. He was lucky.