The Signal-Man

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"The Signal-Man" is a short story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the "Mugby Junction" collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.

The 'signal-man' of the title (who would today be referred to as a 'signalman') tells the narrator of a ghost that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes, and is a harbinger of, a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's job is to sit in a cabin near a tunnel on a lonely stretch of the line and control the movements of passing trains. When there is danger, his fellow signalmen alert him via telegraph and alarms. Three times, he receives phantom warnings of danger when his bell rings in a fashion that only he can hear. Each warning is followed by the appearance of the phantom, and then by a terrible accident. The first accident involves an awful collision between two trains in the tunnel. (It is assumed that Dickens based this incident on the Clayton Tunnel crash that occurred in 1861, five years before he wrote the story.) The second warning involves the mysterious death of a young woman on a passing train. The final warning is a premonition of the signalman's own death.

The theme of the story may have been influenced by Dickens's own involvement in the Staplehurst rail crash on the 9th of June 1865. While passing over a viaduct in Kent, the train on which he was travelling jumped a gap in the line, causing the central and rear carriages to fall onto the riverbed below. Dickens was in the only first-class carriage to survive.

"The Signal-Man" was adapted for television in 1976 by the BBC, with Denholm Elliott as the eponymous character. This BBC production was filmed on the Severn Valley Railway, and used Kidderminster Tunnel and its approach-signal box.