Trailing silks

A record day for temperatures today in Gravesend and it was also lovely down in the signal box at Wittersham Road. Had to have all the windows open to allow a breeze to blow through. The heat had generated a fine crop of house flies in the box so I spent a while trying to evict them into the big outside world.

On Sunday I'd left my lunch box at Northiam but I hatched a plot to have it deivered to the signal box. I rang the buffet at Northiam to establish it was still there and asked if the driver of the DMU service could drop it off when stopping to hand over the token. This was duly aranged and the box returned with a great selection of treats provided by the buffet as it was the last operating day all overseen by a giant black rat residing in box.

Of course, it's Halloween tonight and they're running a "Fright Night" Special train after dark and rats seem to be part of the package. I left the rat adorning the switching out switch ready for the next signalman to enter the box.

My last task was to light the pumpkins on the station platform then it was time for home.

I was reliably informed by Susan that these are the silks of little baby spiders that have all recently hatched out. They have to disperse, so they spin silk and let the wind blow them. In this case onto the telephone wires. She says that they can be blown high into the air, several 1000s of feet indeed. We saw some glinting in sunlight many years ago in Ontario. I though the sunlight ctching the silks made an unusual shot.