I'm reading Gerry Fiennes' "I tried to run a railway" again at the moment. He was responsible when the line from Liverpool Street to Shenfield was electrified in the late 1940s:
"At weekends and sometimes during the week at nights we suspended normal operation. We conducted everything by hand signals."
"One weekend … we came completely unstuck... trains stood at every signal back to Mile End. After a decent interval 7,000 customers alighted and walked to Liverpool Street along all six lines.. That shut up Platforms 1-14 as well."
"A good many meetings later the Chief Electrical Engineer's representative was absent. His substitute... sat between the Civil Engineer and me at lunch. We saw his glass was full throughout.... after lunch he named the [target] day for completion - November 9th 1949. We wrote it in the minutes, it became … law … we only just made it, the new signalling at Liverpool Street came into use at 12.01 [00:01] on opening day. No electric train had been into the terminus. As we stood [next to the track at Mile End] at about 5 am the first train in public service came up. "Guv'nor, I want a pilotman" said the Motorman. "Why" I said. "I don't know the road, new signalling." "Nobody else knows it either". He looked at me for along moment … the Motorman grinned and went.
"For a week or ten days the motormen crawled around in the Liverpool Street area, finding their way through the new signalling."
The past was a different country.