Great Western Coffee Shop

This should be easy for the well travelled among you. Personally, I had never seen anything like this before...

There is one very similar to that somewhere between Totton and Sway, I think.

Agree with Grahame as to location.

There were many around the place.

Ventnor IOW had one and I believe Beccles had one. They were put in where it was not possible to have a barrow crossing to get prams pushchairs, parcels and mail across to an island platform. They were usually interlocked with the signals like level crossing gates.

You're definitely on the right track (quite literally!) and narrowed it down quite correctly

Shall I say that I was waiting there for a connecting service....

Brockenhurst.  I've never seen it in use though!

I've seen it [Brockenhurst swingbridge] used once or twice. It is presumably in fairly regular use though, as it is used to transfer wheelchair passengers across to/from the up side island. The mechanism is interlocked with the signals as you'd expect.

The down side has a conventional barrow crossing at the up end, which isn't too much of a problem as there are no regular train movements in the down direction into the down loop, which effectively operates as a bay platform for Lymington trains.

There was an identical device at Eastleigh when it had a full island layout on the up side, until the late 70s or so, can't remember exactly.

Paul

both correct.. It looks like it has been replaced recently and so I presume it's used on a regular basis.

Eastleigh was resignalled in the early 80s, when the semaphores in the Soton area were swept away. (Still remember hearing the bells as Central box rang "box closing" and within an hour the semaphores were being lifted out of place.) 

So it was there in 80 and gone by 83, but I couldn't be more precise than that.

Damn, on my route and I decided to have a lie in so didn't see it until the cat was out of the bag. They sometimes use it of a morning to ease crowding cause by the Brock-Brats, sorry local college students travelling in from the West.
It's down in my route notes as a luggage platform.

There was something in either Rail or Railways Illustrated about it a while ago as well. Can't remember which one, and am not able to go through my back issues at the moment to find it...