Train Ticket Box with Four Train Tickets for North Eastern Railway

Train ticket box with four train tickets, Saltburn West and Crag Hall, wooden box with bakelite tickets, North Eastern Railway.

Single line working is one of the more dangerous aspects of railway operation. Trains often travel in either direction over a single line section and can only pass at passing loops or stations. Signallers control access by issuing a staff or tablet, unique to a specific section of single line, to train drivers as authority to proceed. This ensured only one train was in section at any one time.

Where single lines might experience more than two trains travelling in the same direction in succession, a method of working was developed to ensure the single line staff is not taken to the wrong end of the section. Called ‘staff and ticket’, a train staff unlocks a box containing paper or metal tickets. The signaller issued individual tickets to give successive trains authority to enter the single line section. Both staff and ticket must be shown to the driver or guard before the ticket is accepted. The staff, retained by the signaller, is issued to the driver of the last train entering the section. It is then surrendered to the signaller at the exit, allowing the process to repeat in the opposite direction.

This ticket box also symbolises the changes affecting Britain’s railway network during the 1950s and 1960s. The line between Saltburn West Junction and Crag Hall once formed the northern part of a route connecting Whitby with Middlesbrough. Completed in 1883, the Whitby, Redcar and Middlesbrough Union Railway (WR&MUR) was a predominantly single-track railway hugging the North Sea Coast and linking Whitby with Loftus, where it joined the double-track Cleveland Railway route to Middlesbrough.

A financial failure, the WR&MUR was eventually closed by British Railways in 1958 and the track subsequently lifted as far as Loftus, which became the southern terminus of the branch from Saltburn West Junction until all services ceased here in 1963. Track was lifted as far as Skinningrove, the location of a steelworks and Crag Hall Signal Box, in 1964. To simplify operation and reduce operating costs for what was now a freight-only branch, one line was closed to trains in July 1967, and single line staff and ticket operation introduced from Saltburn West Junction to Crag Hall. This mode of operation lasted until further re-signalling between 1969-1970 saw Saltburn West Junction and Crag Hall Signal Boxes close.

It is believed this ticket box dates from this period. It includes a slot to receive tickets issued to trains by the signaller at Saltburn West and could be unlocked by a key attached to the staff. Five bakelite tickets suggest that at least four trains could enter the single line section in succession if travelling in the same direction; the last train would carry the staff itself. The opening of a potash mine at Boulby in 1973 saw the branch extended from Skinningrove the following year, and Crag Hall Signal Box was reopened with Tokenless Block signalling.