On board with the railway bobbies It may be a living museum, but safety comes first on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. MATT CLARK meets two men who keep the trains out of harm's way.

FORGET mobiles and laptops, the best way to keep trains running is to use good old fashioned Victorian engineering. And before you say it, these are not the mutterings of an old Luddite, but the words of 20 year old Liam Potter, the youngest signaller on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (NYMR) On cue, and as if to prove his point, the bell at Grosmont signal box rings twice, followed by a pause, then once again, meaning the down train has arrived at Goathland and its driver has inserted a tablet into the Tyers Token machine.

This device takes uniquely shaped disks that physically guarantee a train exclusive right of way on the single line section. It's brilliant, fail-safe and has been since the 1890s. Makes you wonder why there's only four left in the country.

Grosmont signal box is the busiest on the NYMR and boasts 52 levers. The tall ones are mechanical, short ones operate electrical circuits. All are colour coded, with red for stop lights, black for points changes and blue being the lock that keeps them securely in place. Liam seems to have umpteen of them in operation whenever a train arrives or departs. It's rather like a mechanical game of chess, thinking four moves ahead, not to mention all those what ifs.

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Liam Potter, the youngest signaller on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway. Picture: Matt Clark

"You don't just come up here, pull a couple of levers then go home," he says. "You have to think about what you're doing and how it's going to affect something else."

Liam and his fellow railway signallers communicate by bells, which unlike computers never crash and unlike mobiles, aren't dependent on getting a signal. There maybe nostalgia aplenty on this railway, but the volunteers don't use this 100 year old system with wistful affection. They do so because it works.

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A train departs from Grosmont station. Picture: Matt Clark

Joining Liam today, from his railway crossing in Newbridge, near Pickering, is Charles Allenby, the oldest signaller on the Moors railway. But don't let his age give you the impression that this is a cushy number.

"Some look upon heritage railways as potentially a place where things could go wrong and supervision isn't what it should be," says Charles "Far from it. I would suggest that it's tougher here than on the national railway. Although we're volunteers, we are subjected to the same discipline and if I make a mistake, it's no use me saying, well I am 71, Tough."

Indeed, Charles has to take a test every two years and, because of his age, a medical every 12 months.

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 Charles Allenby, the oldest signaller on the Moors railway. Picture: Matt Clark

"The primary responsibility, here, is public safety, the second is punctuality," says Liam. "If that means holding a train at a signal in the middle of nowhere then so be it."

For such old technology the system is impressive and the number of back-ups would impress even the most pernickety of health and safety inspectors. For example, you can't operate the signal without it's accompanying lock and if it's not in place there's no political correctness, here; a pointer swings to the word wrong. So there can be no doubt it's written large in capital letters.

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The map in Grosmont signal box. Picture: Matt Clark

Liam's patch stretches for just under half a mile either side of Grosmont station and he can keep an eye on what's going on thanks to a vintage map of the station, complete with Quatermass style lights that show when a train passes a particular point.

"Signalmen had the nickname railway bobby because they policed the line," says Liam. "In about 1800, all they did was dangle a green flag and the train would go. Then, five minutes later, they'd let the next one go, whether the previous train had got to the next station or not. You could say signalling developed through mistakes."

The biggest mistake made caused Britain's worst railway accident, which occurred 100 years ago at Quintinshill in Scotland.

A passenger train had been shunted on to the main line but wasn't protected by signalling, which meant a southbound troop train travelling to Liverpool collided with it, causing wreckage to spill onto the northbound line.

There was a second collision just a minute later, when a sleeper train from London to Glasgow ploughed into the debris. The gas lit carriages went up like a pyre and engulfed all three trains. The signalmen were found guilty of neglect, charged with manslaughter and convicted of culpable homicide.

NYMR, on the other hand, has an excellent safety record. In fact Charles can only recall one incident, and even that was more like something out of a Buster Keaton film.

"We had a runaway a while ago when the shunting pilot was propelling a bogey vehicle," he says. "Now there's quite a gradient to Pickering and the engine went over the crossing and suddenly stopped. To my horror the vehicle was still going with four people running after it.

"I didn't know at the time that it had been fastened with rope, which had snapped. They won't do that any more."

Charles' love of railways came from visiting the signal box at Helmsley when he was a lad of 14.

"In those days we were allowed to play with the Tyers machine," he says. That got me into joining when I was 17."

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Tyers Token Machine

He always wanted to be a station master, but Dr Beeching put paid to that, so he ended up working in offices. Now, he can do all the things he wanted to do in the 'sixties, thanks to the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.

"I like the responsibility and feeling that I'm doing something worthwhile. I feel privileged to do it," he says. "It's a long day, you have to be on your toes and after being on duty there might be some complex shunting to do.

"To be honest you never know what's next."

Panel The North Yorkshire Moors Railway first opened in 1836 as the Whitby and Pickering Railway. It was planned in 1831 by George Stephenson as a means of opening up trade routes inland from Whitby. Dr Beeching declared the line uneconomic and the last passenger service ran on March 6, 1965 with freight continuing until July 1966.

One year later, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway Preservation Society was formed, and negotiations began for the purchase of the line. The railway was able to reopen for running in 1973.

Today the NYMR carries more passengers than any other heritage railway in the UK and is the third-longest standard gauge heritage line in the country. It runs across the North York Moors from Pickering via Levisham, Newton Dale, Goathland and terminating at Grosmont.