I noticed the other day that the destination board which was over the entrances to platforms 3 to 6 at Waterloo station had been removed. I wonder where it has gone?

It had been obsolete for some time – ever since the plasma displays were introduced. I’m sure the plasma screens are better for all sorts of reasons, not least because my employers are responsible for them, but there is a nostalgic appeal to the old destination boards and the sound they made when a new train was announced: that cascade of spinning names.

I know the old boards must have been awkward to update if a new station or route was introduced as they were basically mechanical, but they did their job. I was watching a bit of cricket coverage the other day and a reporter was showing off the old Edwardian mechanism of the scoreboard at Adelaide and that was all on the same sort of lines. It is not state-of-the-art but it does its job.

When the destination boards of London terminus stations have been ripped out in the past they have ended up in all sorts of places. I saw one in the Science museum in Sydney and another in the foyer area of a railway-themed restaurant in Universal Studios, Los Angeles. That was a strange experience, going to the other side of the world and seeing a huge board displaying the details of the trains I was normally taking to get home to Lewisham every day.

So where will the Waterloo destination boards end up? Will they be preserved in some museum, or broken up and thrown in a skip?