We keep the rules taped inside the cupboard where the winding handle lives, typed up by our gran in 1994 and added to since in three different hands. The tape's gone yellow and lifts at one corner, and every couple of years somebody sticks it back down and doesn't read it while they're doing it.
Close the gate on the first bell, not the second. The first bell gives you ninety seconds. The second gives you less than that, and you won't know how much less until you're standing in it.
Count the wagons out loud. Doesn't matter that no one's listening. If you lose count, start again from one. Don't guess.
If a car's stopped on the crossing, wave your arms, don't shout. Sound carries wrong here after dark, comes back a half-second late, like it's checking with someone first.
Never look at the gap between the barrier and the post. There's about four inches of daylight there on the near side. Nan said you could lose an afternoon just looking through it if the light was right.
If you hear the bell and there's no train, close the gate anyway. Log the time. We've got eleven pages of these now going back to Uncle Dennis's crossing in '97, all with different times, none of them matching a timetable anyone's ever printed.
Don't count for someone else. If your sister's on the handle, let her count her own wagons. Two voices counting the same train pull the middle out of it somehow. Aunt Pauline tried it once and swore the eight o'clock took forty minutes to clear, though her watch only moved four.
If you see a man in a high-vis on the tracks after the barrier's down, do not go out to him. He is not stuck. He has been stuck since the Wednesday in October the express caught him fixing the relay box, and however long it looks like he's got, it is not that long.
dont open the gate till the man clears even if hes been standing there since teatime the trains not moving either way and thats how you know
mum says he waves sometimes dont wave back it makes it longer for him not shorter
if the bell rings and keeps ringing past the second train that already went past the crossing thats fine thats normal now just count anyway
we dont let the little ones do the handle no more not since Kieran said the train took an hour to go four feet and cried after
some nights the gap between the barrier and post is more than four inches. dont measure it. dont tell da how many inches it is. just close up
We still do the crossing in shifts. Three of us to a week, four now that Callum's old enough, though he wasn't even born when gran wrote the first page. The handle's stiff on the downstroke.
Somebody's meant to oil it. There's a tin on the windowsill for it, half rust, been there since before I can remember, and nobody wants to be the one standing out there with it while the light goes.
Last Tuesday it was my turn on first bell. I closed the gate. Counted eleven wagons out loud, same as always, and the man in the high-vis was there against the relay box, one boot on the rail, not moving.
The express sat maybe six feet off him. Not slowing. Not arriving either. Just there, the way it's always there, and I stood with my hand on the cold metal of the handle and didn't look at how long it took because you stop being able to tell after a while.
His arm was halfway up. Not a wave. Just up, and staying there.
"Hest Bank Type 15 signal box on the West Coast Main Line and level crossing" by kitmasterbloke is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.