Williton Level Crossing

A live webcam at Williton station on the West Somerset Railway, looking along the line towards Bishops Lydeard, with the level crossing and the signal box in frame. The railway runs 36.6 kilometres from Bishops Lydeard to the sea at Minehead, the longest standard-gauge independent heritage line in the United Kingdom.

The signal box is the thing to notice: built in 1875 for the Bristol & Exeter Railway, it is the only one of that company's boxes still working, and it still pulls the levers for the crossing below it. Trains arrive from the right, pause at the platform, and leave to the left: steam most days in season, diesels on others, with the crossing gates and semaphores doing their slow choreography around each one.

The line runs to a seasonal timetable, thickest from spring to autumn and thin in winter (UTC+0, +1 in summer), so check the day before settling in. Between trains this is a quiet English village crossing, which is its own kind of view.