Originally Posted by
XV490
Can someone confirm when, and perhaps why, the traffic lights were installed? Did a particular incident lead to their introduction?
Earlier in this now-mammoth topic there's a reference to a bus being hit by an overshooter, with resulting casualties. If true, there would surely have been wide press coverage. Anyone know the facts – or the fiction?
I remember the traffic lights between Whelpley Hill and Bovingdon Village as always being there even in the early/mid '50s; they were on the main Chesham to Hemel road
very close to the 02 threshold.
There were 2 bus services operating the route from Chesham to Hemel, these being the green London Transport service 316 and a local (to Chesham) service called 'The Rover' as it was operated by the Rover Bus Company owned by a person called 'J.R.G Dell'. Whilst the Rover ran along Whelpley Hill then turned round and came back before turning left direct to Bovingdon village past the traffic lights, the 316 bypassed Whelpley Hill then turned right off the main road and then left again about a field away from the road with the traffic lights on it so maybe this diversion was as a result of a bus incident. The traffic lights were used by ATC to halt road traffic when landing on runway 02 and for both landing and departing traffic on 20. I can recall at least 2 incidents where either a landing aircraft on 02 touched down short of the main road or an aircraft overan and went across the road after landing on 20 so that would seem to prove the traffic lights were needed.
One evening when we arrived for gliding, there was a Devon on a Queen Mary parked next to Hangar 1 and the story was that when landing on 20, pilots aimed to touchdown well past the threshold due to the fact the threshold was co-incident with a 'hump' in the runway and especially if you were carrying a high ranking officer, it looked bad if you touched down on the numbers because you tended to take off again when you hit the hump and on this occasion, the aircraft touched down late then the pilots discovered there was a brake problem and the aircraft ended up crossing the main road. The local farmer had a gate just across the road from the end of the runway so this would aid in recovering the aircraft and in fact, after the airfield was closed, a landowner used to land on the runway then taxy across the main road through this gate to park in the adjacent field.