Big thank you to Stuart Hall, Les Green and Mark Clare for helping our Chair, John, give the site a massive tidy up. Tall weeds removed, ivy cut back, fence repaired, rubble and rubbish removed, and composting area built up to put the weeds into. The first of many big pushes forward for this year!

£13,285 is paid over to us from National Heritage Lottery forming the first part of the £26,000 awarded.

Another small part of the Signal Box is brought back to life, one of our committee members has taken the track circuit removed on the night of closure, given it a good clean and tidy up. then after a check of the wiring and some replacement bulbs he managed to get the lights working once more ready to display.

April 2019 Our mains power distribution box is moved to its final and correct location on site. The footings have passed inspection and the concrete is poured. Stamford College have finished restoring the original Deeping crossing gates, they came back to us for storage and painting.

Our first newsletter is distributed.

A grant of £5000 is awarded to the committee towards the rebuild, our thanks go to the local parish council.

We are donated one of the original cabinets removed from the signal box in the 1990s. Thanks are given to the Cook family for looking after it for so long.

The Signal Box is handed over to the committee and moved to Spalding for storage in a Network Rail yard.

With our applicant accepting our job offer of Project Facilitator, we hold an evening meeting with her to do personal introductions and give her more information about our project and our aims.

After lots of work from the committee we were successful in receiving a National Heritage Lottery grant to assist with giving the project a big bump start in the right direction. National Heritage Lottery awards us the fist part of our grant, a sum of £26,000.  

All the best laid plans could not see the world hit by COVID 19, this means we still had plenty of behind the scenes work to do but the site remained somewhat neglected. small projects continue at the committee members homes and we all start getting use to zoom meetings instead of face to face meetings!

The site is now clear and the JCB could come in, the foundations are dug! Our site office is moved into place and levelled ready for use by workers. Rt. Hon. John Hayes MP turned the first sod on the new site. This was in his words "The end of the begging" now we will continue our ground works ready for the rebuild process. See his speech on our gallery.

Lever frame inspection carried out on the ground, found to be in good workable order and fairing well from the weather. Oiled and re-sheeted.

We get official paperwork from land registry confirming we own the land to rebuild the Signal Box.

Planning permission is granted for the proposed site.

The last night of operation, the last train runs past heading for Peterborough. Once the train was out of the section, the deconstruction of St James Deeping Signal Box begins.

After some interviewing, we are happy to report we found the perfect Project Facilitator, and after some references are checked up on, we offer her the job. This is again with thanks to our new National Heritage Lottery grant.

With COVID 19 restrictions still in place site work is still difficult. but some of the committee have been on site in small works parties to clear weed overgrowth and repair a leaking water pipe. 

Stamford College students have completed blockwork up to ground level. The site is now ready to be releveled around the blockwork ready for the engineers bricks and damp course.

Groundwork is started to level the site.

We have power on site!

The Department of Culture award the committee a grant of £20,000 to purchase land for the rebuild. 

The Signal Box parts are inspected in Spalding ready for moving back to Deeping for continued storage.