Famous photo in new KX book

[Mickey]

Yes your probably correct about that assumption Stevie about why Belle Isle Up box was retained mainly because of the light engine movements originating from Top shed and exiting via Goods And Mineral Junction and Copenhagen Junction boxes onto the Down slow line and then running back from Copenhagen Junction and passed Belle Isle Up box and onto the Up lines back into Kings Cross also I presume that possibly during the early days of 'power signalling' of the 1930s the LNER signalling department possibly didn't want to extend the area or control of the 1933 Kings Cross box to far out beyond the north end of Gasworks tunnel and were happy to leave both Belle Isle Up & Copenhagen Junction boxes in situ for the time being and then of course the second world war intervened in 1939 and during the first half of the 1940s with it's aftermath being felt for the rest of that decade. Also maybe with Absolute block working in force over the Up fast & Up slow lines between Holloway South Up & Belle Isle Up boxes it kept the block section 'shorter' between Belle Isle Up & Kings Cross although Kings Cross box did eventually work with Holloway South Up over the Up fast & Up slow lines from 1968 onwards until around 1975 when Holloway South Up closed.

The block working between Holloway South Up & Kings Cross after Belle Isle Up box had closed in 1968?. Am I correct in assuming that the type of block working between Holloway South Up & Kings Cross over the Up fast & Up slow lines into Kings Cross after Belle Isle Up box was closed was either track circuit block or a modified form of Absolute block?. I also assume that the Up fast & Up slow lines from Holloway South Up to Kings Cross were both fully track circuited throughout although that doesn't necessarily mean to say that it was 'track circuit block' just that it was fully track circuited throughout. Stevie & John I reckon you know what I mean?.

[StevieG]

By 1969/70 when KC was working with Holl South Up/Down Micky, all four lines were TC'd throughout (as in fact they already were through from the Souths to the Norths), and "TCB" applied, except that the advance box in both directions had 'Acceptance Levers' (actually at KC, special black-fronted block shelf units with a Normal/Accept switch and white/red indication lights), with the levers at SD coloured red-over-brown.
This was probably because in all four cases there were facing and/or trailing points within the 'overlap' of the advance box's first stop signal (KC 1 & 13, and SD 8(?) & 2).

[Mickey]

That's clarified that then Stevie and in fact I do remember several years ago you saying that Holloway South Down had 'Acceptance leavers' on the Down fast & Down slow lines from Kings Cross. So Kings Cross had 'Acceptance switches' for the Up fast & Up slow lines from Holloway South Up plus all the running lines between Kings Cross & Holloway South Down and Holloway South Up & Kings Cross were all track circuited and TCB was the method of working between those three boxes.

[STAFFORDA4]

Going back to the original post I believe the photo was taken by a certain G R Grigs and seem to recall a piece entitled " Four O' Clock Luck" somewhere in a railway or society mag (Railway Observer?)
I've just stumbled across a short note from the then RCTS President in The Railway Magazine for Jan/Feb 1946 p54 stating;

......."in regard to the safety of Lt George R Grigs .....who has now returned to this country...It is with feelings of great thankfulness and relief that I take the earliest opportunity, of informing members that I have received a letter from our dear friend and colleague George Grigs,...from Rangoon....that he had been liberated.

At the time he wrote he was in hospital undergoing observation, but hoped to be leaving shortly for England.
He has had a very tough time , but the enemy have evidently not broken his spirit, as he ran a Far Eastern branch of the RCTS inside the prison camp, and actually produced copies of a Far Eastern "Railway Observer"

...................

What a guy!