Hi I purchased what I think is a BR signal lamp but I'm not entirely sure. It has three aspect lenses red, green and amber. There in no glass lens like you see on a lot of lamps, this may have been removed at some stage in its life. Inside is a reflector and currently a candle.
It's a Southern Railway fogging handlamp, used by signalmen and other lineside staff, but it's missing the front glass and housing. I have two of them, but I have never seen one missing the front part like that before.
(Each railway company and BR region had its own style of lamps)
I hope you didn't pay too much, because without the front part and paraffin burner, it's worthless as railwayana. Unfortunately there are many either unscrupulous or unknowledgeable eBay (etc) sellers out there who hear that railwayana is 'valuable' and will try to shift any old tat that looks a bit old with words like 'rare', 'vintage' and 'this would be a great part of any collection' to the unwary.
I spent the early part of building up my knowledge about railway lamps from nothing by learning the hard (and expensive) way of the mug that people saw coming a mile off!
For info... SR handlamps are regularly misidentified as 'locomotive' lamps, because they have an aperture for a lamp bracket on the back. This was for the purposes of using them as an emergency tail lamp, if necessary. Lacking the bullseye lens of a loco headlamp, they would have been useless as such.
