green26.jpg) Other Dunton Green images make reference to the new colour-light branch Up Starting signal which had been installed and then removed again sometime during the period September 1961 to closure. Reasons for the installation of that signal have been pondered in other image captions but a total mystery concerns the Westerham branch Dunton Green Fixed Distant signal. This [semaphore] signal was located east of Chevening Halt on the up side and ¾mile from Dunton Green signal box. Near this location was the object seen here. It is a concrete base of the type used to mount colour-light signals. Into it are set four studs onto which the base of the signal post is bolted. On the assumption this object was indeed the base for a colour-light signal, the mystery is why a colour-light signal was planned for this location when the branch, beyond Dunton Green sidings, was due to close. There have been mutterings among some sources that the Westerham branch was to be electrified as part of the Kent Coast scheme. However, details of the Kent Coast scheme, in the form as authorised in 1956, make no mention of this and no other contemporary written evidence of plans to take the third rail to Westerham has been found. If this was true and - again - no firm evidence has been found, it would explain the plan to install a colour-light signal at the above location. Once closure had been decided upon and announced, the installation of the signal would have been abandoned. Another possibility, again without foundation, might be a plan to retain the line as far as Chevening for the transport of materials for road building. Indeed, it was for this reason that the sidings at Dunton Green were reinstated after their closure in 1962. This mystery does, perhaps, clear up one further mystery. Several photographs of Dunton Green branch platform taken in the run-up to closure show a large quantity of concrete conduit sections laying beside the track. If it was planned to install a colour-light Distant signal along the branch, this conduit could well have been intended for carrying the cables to the signal. Perhaps a keen walker interested in railways will take a walk along the trackbed towards Chevening to look for any evidence of installed conduit.
Photo by Chris Sutton from Bullfinch Close web site |
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