The Signalman (film)

"The Signalman"
A Ghost Story for Christmas episode
Title screen, showing the cutting and the signal box.
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 6
Directed by	Lawrence Gordon Clark
Written by	Charles Dickens (story) Andrew Davies (adaptation)
Original air date	22 December 1976
Episode chronology
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The Signalman is a 1976 BBC television adaptation of "The Signal-Man", an 1866 short story by Charles Dickens. The story was adapted by Andrew Davies as the BBC's sixth Ghost Story for Christmas, with Denholm Elliott starring as the signalman and Bernard Lloyd as the traveller, an unnamed character who acts as a plot device in place of the short story's narrator.

It was the first of the series not to be an adaptation of an M.R. James story, and the last adaptation of an existing story. The production was directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and filmed on the Severn Valley Railway.

In a railway cutting, a solitary figure of a signalman is observed from above standing by the track by a man (referred to as "The Traveller" in the cast list) who, shielding the sun from his face with one arm, waves the other and calls down "Hallo, Below There".

The signalman seems fearful and makes no attempt to speak to the traveller. Observing the signalman's demeanour towards him, the traveller states that the signalman appears to be afraid of him. To put him at ease, he reassures the signalman that there is nothing to fear about him. The Signalman then welcomes the Traveller into his lonely signal box. Seated in front of the cabin's fire, the two men speak of the signalman's work. His labour consists of a dull, monotonous routine, but the signalman feels he deserves nothing better, as he wasted his academic opportunities when he was young.

During their conversation the Signalman is repeatedly distracted by a ghostly vibration on his signal bell that only he can hear. The Traveller remarks on the bell and the red light at the entrance to the tunnel before changing the subject to how an accident in the tunnel must be a terrible thing. The Signalman, looking slightly wide-eyed at this tells him that a tunnel collision is the "worst to be feared".

To comfort the disturbed man, the Traveller states that he almost believes he has met a contented man at peace as the Signalman does his duty no matter what and that he has no desire to be anywhere but his signal box. The Traveller agrees to meet the man the next night when the Signalman starts his next shift. Holding his light so that The Traveller can find his way back up the path The Signalman asks him not to call out.