sandwhich wrote: " There used to be a signal box called Cemetery between New Southgate and Oakleigh Park as the name implies a cemetery was right behind the box, that must have seemed very spooky on occasions especially at night when a fog descended. .... "
'Beg pardon Sirrr',
(as I think Duck once said in the Rev. Awdry's Railway Series), but Cemetery box (...Up Box, as it once was) certainly was at one time quite close to part of a large area of land acquired for cemetery use and which was situate on either side of Brunswick Park Road
(all of which, or a large part at least, was the Great North London Cemetery, much of which, all on the east side of Brun. Pk. Rd., still remains as Southgate Cemetery and Crematorium), but that was probably more than 70 years ago.
Also just south of the box's site, and which may well have led to the signal box's naming, was the special station of the 1860s/70s, with chapel, for the cemetery, sited on the Up side of the main line at the north end of its 'branch' track from New Southgate. This was used by the short-lived funeral train service from King's Cross 'funeral' station (situated up the Up side embankment above the main line at Belle Isle, and of which, much still stood until 1962).
[ A comprehensive account of the 'funeral' stations and services can be found in a book "The End of The Line: The Story of the Railway Service to The Great Northern London Cemetery", 2003, by Rev. Martin Dawes, 111 pp., pub'd by the Barnet & District Local History Society. ISBN-10: 0951334255 ; ISBN-13: 978-0951334256 : Can currently be found on 'Amazon'.]
But long before I came to know Cemetery box which was in the late 1960s, the cemetery land near the box had gone into other use (from about 1880?), and the 'Cemetery' funeral station area and much land around it had, in the fullness of time, been transformed into the large, prominent factory premises (1930s/40s?), with surrounding grounds, of Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd. (STC) (who manufactured quite an amount of telecommunications and train describer equipment for rail use), which still retained a rail-served goods platform along the main-line-facing side of the factory, the siding of which was connected with the Cemetery-New Southgate Up Reception line by two Annetts Key-released ground frame-operated points connections.
Something like 25 years ago, a significant central portion of the factory building was declared structurally unsafe. A temporary speed restriction was then imposed on all the main line tracks for many weeks, and at night, interior lighting made it possible to see, from passing trains, that a veritable forest of floor-to-ceiling 'Acrow' support props had ben erected inside the building.
A reduced part of the STC building survives today in other commercial use, much rebuilt and/or cosmetically modernised, and substantially screened off by a row of more recent trees (cyprus? leylandii?), though just possibly some vestige of the goods platform might survive.
The site of Cemetery box in the box's last years, as now, must have been about 600 yards
as the fly crow's from the nearest part of the remaining cemetery land.
However, with Barnet Tunnel's three bores only about 100 yards away to the north, and being pretty dark at night, despite the factory, and the rear of much 1930s-ish housing opposite, I imagine the site could still be spooky for some.
