The Tetbury Branch Line signal box has officially reopened.
The box was built when the line opened in 1889. Although it stopped being used in 1926, the box has gone on to have an interesting history.
It was sold to a Mr Tuckett, who was a partner in Fielder and Tuckett, valuers and auctioneers/estate agents. He had just built Tormead(e) on the Malmesbury Road and took the signal box there where it was later used as a garden shed.
In 2009, when the then owners put the house on the market, railway enthusiast Stephen Randolph offered to take the signal box off their hands.
As a child he had lived opposite the old station and went on to write a book about the Tetbury Branch Line.
With the help of son Peter and Geoff and Jane Haines, the the 9ft by 8ft box was dismantled piece by piece over two days before Stephen drove it up to his home in Barlow, Derbyshire.
It was reassembled and has been there ever since, with an opening ceremony held the following year making national headlines.
But Stephen always promised that if he ever moved house then Tetbury Goods Shed Arts Centre, now the only original remaining building on the site, could have the signal box back.
So at the end of last year David Walker and a band of helpers drove to Barlow to once again deconstruct the building and drive it back to Tetbury.
The laborious task of re-building it started all over again and the signal box and signal are now back in all their glory next to the restored railway carriage behind the Goods Shed.
Tetbury signal box. Photo: Simon Pizzey
And Saturday saw the official re-opening of the signal box, with Stephen returning home to Tetbury to cut the tape, accompanied by the Swindon Brass Band.
All photos by Simon Pizzey – simonpizzey.com
For more information about Tetbury Goods Shed Arts Centre go to shed-arts.co.uk
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