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Real people have other things to do than wander around bothering people trying to do their jobs.) He decides to spend the evening, and a number of evenings after, hanging out in the signalman’s box, learning what he does for his work, coming to the conclusion that he’s a smart guy and definitely not got a screw loose.Įventually the signalman finds the words to confide in him. The signalman looks at our narrator like he might be a ghost.īut our narrator is not a ghost. For some reason he can’t quite explain he’s wanting to know more about this guy. He catches sight of a signalman standing on the tracks. So our unnamed narrator goes for an after dinner stroll. There’s not much in the way of evening entertainment out in the countryside. We’re meant to paste our own selves onto him.
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He might die anyway so don’t get too attached. This guy is presented in statu nascendi (without backstory). A learned guy, maybe a doctor, is staying at a country inn. The narrator doesn’t seem to be carrying a light of his own. (In this story it’s referred to as a ‘death light’.) The signalman is a middle-aged guy who carries a white light. There’s a red light at the tunnel entrance. The signalman’s box is down there right next to the track, near the entrance to the tunnel. Imagine a railway line set deep in a cutting, leading into a tunnel. He wants the reader to feel as weirded out as this guy does, simply out for a stroll. This is deliberate disorientation on Dickens’ part. When you first start reading, you might have a little trouble figuring out where you are. The Signalman by Charles Dickens WHAT HAPPENS IN A NUTSHELL It is extremely creepy (though a coincidence nonetheless) that Dickens died five years to the day after the accident. This story is certainly an outworking of the trauma he experienced after that experience, and from which he never recovered. The world’s biggest working mechanical signal box is Severn Bridge Junction at Shrewsbury railway station in Shropshire.Ĭharles Dickens was himself in a railway accident. (The Australian signal system is especially ridiculous because the signal colours weren’t shared between states!) You can still find many signal boxes throughout Britain and other British colonies, notably India, South Africa and along the three east coast states of Australia. for cafes or community projects) if they’re sufficiently distant from a working railway line. Old buildings are often repurposed by communities (e.g. Centralised Rail Operating Centres now do the work originally conducted in signal boxes. Since the early 1800s, the job description of a signaller has changed a lot due to computerisation. Keeping trains on the right tracks and apart from each other was entirely up to you and you had to stay awake. Sounds pretty cruisey, but this was a stressful gig! You had no computer back up.
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Signallers recorded train movements and every communication that happened between other signallers at different boxes. Then they’d write it down in a Train Register Book. Then they would check for the red tail lamp on the last carriage of a train to ensure nothing had fallen off. They were as important as air traffic controllers today.Įarly signallers would hang out in their signal box until a train passed by. At first they were called the Railway Police. The job of signallers in boxes next to railways started in the early 1800s.
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You’d have to travel back in time.Ī signaller is an employee of a railway transport network who operates the points and signals from a signal box in order to control the movement of trains. HOW DO I GET A JOB IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE AS A SIGNALMAN?įirst, the bad news. If you’ve ever fantasised about leaving your open office or customer service job to work alone in a tiny box in the middle of nowhere, unbothered and free to get on with your straight-forward but very necessary job, this might be the story for you. “ The Signalman” (1866) is a ghost story by iconic English author Charles Dickens.