'He'd hit the jackpot': Shrewsbury signalman Archie's railway dream

When Archie Alexander was made a signalman at Shrewsbury's Severn Bridge Junction signal box, it was like winning the lottery.

With its gleaming, polished levers, imposing structure and position, it is one of the most famous and striking signal boxes, the largest operational mechanical signal box in the world.

Such is the importance of the building which stands just outside Shrewsbury railway station that it is Grade II listed.

"I think that was his main aim, to get into that box, because that was the main box in signalman's terms," said son Dave.

"I think he felt he had hit the jackpot because it's a statement signal box and always has been, even today."

Arthur Edward Alexander - Arthur to his family, but known as Archie at work - was a railway man through and through, starting at 17 and spending all his working life on the railway, retiring after a 48-year career.

"He loved his work on the railway. He was absolutely spellbound by the railway. His life and soul was the railway," said Dave, who got in touch with us after we published a picture of his late dad at the Severn Bridge signal box.

His enthusiasm rubbed off on Dave, who as a boy aged 10 to 12 went along when he worked as a signalman at the Coleham signal box, and would see enthralling steam loco sights - Manor Class, King Class, King George V, Castle Class, and even the Flying Scotsman when it watered up at the Coleham sheds.

"The King George V was a marvellous engine with a bell on the front, like a church bell."

Not only that, he got rides.

"The drivers used to pull up outside in locomotives and he used to say 'give the lad a lift down to the sheds while you water up and coal up.' One of the memorable things all these chaps used to say is you have never lived unless you have had a ride on the footplate of a steam engine."

However, being just a lad, he said he probably did not appreciate it as much as he should have.

Dave, who is 74 and from Shrewsbury, would not follow in his father's footsteps.

"The person who stopped me was my mother for the simple reason that she hated the shift work. She said 'you are not going on there. I have enough with your father doing shift work.' I ended up going to be a carpenter and joiner."

Archie, from Shrewsbury, became a top tier grade A1 signalman at Severn Bridge, where he served many years, finishing his career there. Again Dave would get to pop along, and they got him to polish the levers, and he even had a go at pulling one.

"They were really heavy."

One of the perks was free rail travel, and Archie and wife Molly ventured far and wide - Torquay, Eastbourne, Llandudno, but also internationally, to France and, Dave thinks, even Benidorm.

In fact Archie never had a car.

"He never hankered to drive. He always relied on a tatty old push bike. We bought him a new one. He tried it once and didn't like it. It was a ladies' bike that he had, and he would not alter from it."