If you've passed through Maidstone West Railway Station and taken a moment to glance up from your phone or newspaper you may have spotted a slightly shabby, off-white timber shed standing on a brick platform some 20ft off the ground.

You may also have wondered 'what is that?'

Well, that is one of the county's oldest pieces of living history - celebrating its 120th birthday this year.

Technically it's a signal box - responsible for directing trains and managing the signals along the line to make the railway run smoothly and keep passengers safe.

But under this functional surface it is so much more.

The Maidstone West signal box was built in 1899 and has stood up not only against the test of time and technological revolution but the awesome force of a First World War 'doodlebug' flying bomb.

It remains one of very few early signalling stations still in operation and a rare example of a railway structure built by Evans O'Donnell & Co. The company pioneered their own designs between 1894 and 1903.

The Grade-II listed building is visible to passing travellers along the railway and from the road it is set back behind an iron gate off of Bodiam Court, in Maidstone's Hart Street.

The building, which has a brick base and a timber top frame, was almost completely destroyed in August 1944 when a German V1 bomb landed just feet away in an adjourning yard, used mainly for shunting trains.

The blast killed two workers and a horse and left the signal box as a warped, splintered carcass - obliterating a third of the building.

Nick Wellington, a deputy local operations manager at Network Rail, said: “More than a third of it was destroyed. It could have been worse, but the bomb buried itself in soft earth and much of the blast was deflected upwards.

“Thomas Butcher was the signaller on duty in the box at the time. Although injured in the blast, he had the presence of mind to record the time of attack as 11:03 before being taken to hospital."

He added: "It's quite hidden away here, it's not at the end of the platform like other signal boxes but it's a part of Maidstone's history and for the foreseeable future it will be remaining here."

Evidence of the damage can still be seen today in the form of scratches and nicks in the the handle of one of the signalling levers.

Despite post-war austerity it was swiftly restored with features sympathetic to its original design, however, the yard has since been replaced with housing.

Dan Manning is one of four men who continue to work the signal box 24 hours a day guiding three trains through the station each hour.

Although aided by technology, the job is done much the same way as it always was despite being surrounded by a world where almost everything seems automated.

Even the levers themselves are original. While the box once used all 115 levers, now only a fraction of that number are operation with the loss of the yard which needed more equipment to control more complicated shunting movements.

"We work behind the scenes, sometimes at difficult times," he said.

"It's great knowing the history of this box because you are literally working a massive part of history as this has served this town greatly in the past.

The signal box changed in the 1930s when electric services replaced steam at the Strood end of the Maidstone West line and more power was installed in the 1980s when colour light signals were phased in at Maidstone West over the manual semaphore ones. The rest of the Medway Valley line did not get the colour controls.

There are now 40,000 signals across England, Wales and Scotland.

As well as controlling the goods yard, the Maidstone West building also handled access for trains the goods line down to the wharf at Tovil, via a short branch line. Tovil had a goods station which closed in 1977 and stood near where Albert Reed Gardens is now.

Dan, 27, handles the signal levers carefully touching the handles only with a cloth - and there is a reason for this too.

Many older signallers take such pride in the equipment they keep the metal well polished and insist the machinery is handled with the utmost care to keep it looking good.

If in future if you catch a glimpse of the structure, standing dutifully as ever beside the track, you will know as well as those old signallers did, that your journey past it is much more special than anyone would think.

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