Every other Saturday at STEAM the group of volunteers that used to drive and fire the steam locos talk to people about life on the footplate in the glorious days of steam on British Railways.

I would bet that during their talks to families and individuals they do not get asked many questions about timetables.

Timetables are a subject that causes much consternation to people whether it was in our grandparents’ day or for us all today, nothing has changed!

The travelling public today are no different from then and do not much care for the intricacies of train timetables. The view has always been that they are an inconvenience, well except for Sherlock Holmes who used them to help solve some of his crimes. Timetables are, as those footplate crews at STEAM will tell you, what made railways operate safely, well along with the driver that is!

Signals are a saviour or a frustration depending on your point of view; only last week I was on a train held at a signal at Kemble arriving into Swindon late.

How many times have you sat on a train for what seems like an age waiting for a signal to change, oh the frustration. That “delay” is to ensure that the train you are sitting in does not travel into a danger zone! It may be a delay, but a rail accident will surely wreck your day.

To do this safely every single movement on every mile of line has to be worked out; it takes weeks before a timetable is introduced to cover changes in a timetable or even longer in the case of introducing a complete new timetable.

It is not a simple case of fixing the departure and arrival times of trains, but taking account of everything that moves on that line Even moving empty trains, to make sure they are at the right station for the start of their scheduled service, has to be factored in.

It also has to take account of the movements of freight trains, single locomotives, shunting locos and maintenance operations. Once this has been done then it has to be monitored carefully in case it begins to slip even by a few minutes any slippage can put people in danger!

This process is known as train control and comes from the very early days of railway operation.

The Great Western Railway, were pioneers and subsequent leaders in train control. The GWR was always innovative and painstakingly methodical when it came to train control, it had learned that lesson the hard way: the first train crash on the GWR was on Christmas Eve 1841, when a landslide occurred in the Sonning Cutting between Reading and London, killing nine people (one died later in hospital) and seriously injuring 17.

It is likely that this accident prompted Gladstone to introduce the Railway Regulation Act of 1844.

What you have to remember is that trains run on smooth wheels on top of smooth rails, this means that the brake force applied to them to stop them without skidding along the track and means the train is out of control, is limited. You cannot expect to stop a train in anything like the distance of a motor vehicle with rubber tyres.

A train must be given sufficient warning and distance to stop in. Signals do this but they also have to work in conjunction with the points that change the direction of the train from line to another.

All these were operated from a signal box, and the signal staff had to be familiar with the timetable to ensure that they set the correct combination of signals and points.

STEAM has a signal box you can work in and also has some good examples of early signals.

The older drivers and firemen at STEAM will tell you that in the 1950s the driver was in control and if the signal did not match the points, which happened occasionally then they would not proceed.

That is why drivers had to sign to say that they knew the road (route).

If you find that hard to believe go along to STEAM and speak to the men who worked on the iron road.