Pushing the Button

OK - so after Quasimodo's replacement I promise that this really is a true story and one told by my grandad too so I'd guess we are talking of eighty years ago here ...

My grandad was a railway signalman, a great job of the kind that you don't find much now - at least in Britain. Of course working in some signal boxes as busy stations must have abeen pretty stressful life but working at some small station out in the country, or at a lonely junction up in the hills with maybe six trains a day - heaven! Plenty of time to sit aound, read books, polish the levers and drink endless cups of tea beween the trains chuffing by. I spent days and days in such places as a child.

If you have never been in a signal box take a look at the photograph (from the Bluebell Railway in Sussex!) The big levers below move the points and signals to control the trains and up above that is the 'instrument shelf' for the 'block telegraph' and other safety instruments. Above that - the 'track diagram' to tell you what all the levers do.

Now once my grandad was working somewhere - I think Hopetown Junction at Darlington - where the the man who worked the other 'shift' had only one arm. He'd lost the other in the First World War. And my grandad became very curious about one thing. This colleague had immense strength in the one arm and could pull heavy point levers with his one had where everyone else had to use two. But for just one special train movement every he had to press a button up on that instrument shelf at exactly the same time as pulling the lever underneath.
How did he do that? With just one hand?

One day my grandad contrived to stay there late until the first train of the man's new shift arrived. His friend reached for the lever with one hand and .... leaned forward and pressed the button with his nose!

For weeks after that my grandad tried to press that button in the same way but he never did. All he ever managed to do was hurt his nose and get a nose bleed.