Sundays were at time and 3/4 unless you had a specific local agreement?
Anyway, going home when surely the Brasso should be in use for shining up the frame?
I remember visiting Abergavveny box in 1993 and the shine from the emergency detonator leavers was painful on the eyes.
Weekends were definitely for cleaning
I did stay-over during the time the box was supposed to be closed on one Sunday. I got the ladder out and used a mixture of scouring powder (remember that? The railway equivalent of "Vim" or "Ajax") and Day & Martin's metal polish (we never had "Brasso) to clean many years of grime off the windows. The locos used to stop right outside the box, and the deposit on the glass from the exhaust had to be seen to be believed.
Not popular with the other bobbies at Moreton in Marsh, because, although it meant that you could see out of the windows much better, it also meant that people could see in
On a side-note, the box had small window panes, and the glass in several of these panes was badly flawed. It really did make things a bit dodgy when you were trying to work out if a train or loco was clear of points before you shifted them in shunting or run-round moves
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