Halogen lights with long and short shades at Bow Brickhill Level Crossing, Buckinghamshire

Date filmed: Saturday the 23rd of March 2024
Videos filmed at: 16:49 | 17:20

Route: Marston Vale Line
– Bow Brickhill (BWB) Station

Crossing type: Manually Controlled Barrier crossing with CCTV (MCB-CCTV)

Location: V10 Brickhill Street, Caldecotte / Bow Brickhill
Trains featured:
Intro – 0:00
–
Lowering 1 (0:11):
150 139 (London North Western Railway) – 1:35
2S23 Bletchley ➡ Bedford | 2 minutes late
–
Lowering 2 (2:19):
150 137 (London North Western Railway) – 3:41
2S22 Bedford ➡ Bletchley | 2 minutes late
–
End-of-video picture showcase: 4:23

A fairly busy level crossing found between the staggered platforms of Bow Brickhill Station on the Marston Vale Line, located right at the fringe between the outside world and Milton Keynes, and the unique and very unusual ‘V’ (likely standing for vertical) prefix of the road name gives the area away quite well. ‘V’ (vertical) and ‘H’ (horizontal) road prefixes dominate all the north to south and east to west (respectively) main roads through Milton Keynes. The staggered platforms trail the crossing so that the barriers aren’t lowered while the trains perform their station duties, and on a typical off-peak service, the hourly services arrive here every half an hour. Traffic jams are notorious here due to there being busy roundabouts almost immediately either side of the level crossing, and queues caused by the passage of trains take ages to clear the area.

Despite it being a busy crossing, especially being so close to two busy roundabouts, it still has its halogen bulb-type warning lights making it one of only a handful nationwide, but as many as nine on this line alone, to still have them! In the mid-2010’s, the pair of wigwags facing north were given full sets of long shades in a bid to mitigate the effects of light glare, but how and why LED’s weren’t installed either then or any time up to the day of filming is quite a mystery. The barriers on one side of the road are significantly longer than those on the other, as this road used to have three lanes. The space of the third lane is still there, but now taken up by the rest of a shared pedestrian / cycle path connecting a brand new industrial area. The sticks protruding from the fronts of the lights have cameras pointing back at them to prove they’re operational in case of an incident, and it also seriously speeds up the rectification of broken bulbs too.

Train details sourced from:
Real Time Trains: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/detailed/
Open Train Times: https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps
Traksy: https://traksy.uk/live

Filmed on: Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus in 4K 30fps

Thanks for watching!