KX signal box?

[Mickey]

St Pancras Tunnel box was probably graded as a class A box (in B.R. days) and receiving the lowest rate of payment for signalmen who worked it although a signalman mite have received some extra payment like an extra couple of quid per shift for working in such conditions but this only an assumption?.

When you are a signalman you want some glory attached to working a decent looking box so forget St Pancras Tunnel box and 'go up stairs' into the daylight and work either St Pancras Station box or St Pancras Junction box instead.

[harvester]

Is this the one Mickey ?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/08/2c ... a4f274.jpg

[Mickey]

I can't see your post above harvester due to restriction on this pc but if it's one of the St Pancras boxes pre-1957 two BIG BOXES the station or junction box they're the ones.

[StevieG]

Pretty sure that's a photo I have previously seen, captioned as being St. Pancras Tunnel box harvester.

[Mickey]

With regards to the now decommissioned 1971 Kings Cross power box what use is the building now being used for?. Maybe some sort of training center perhaps(?) and are the decommissioned signaling panels still in situ(?) or it is now being used as an S&T storeroom and messroom?. I remember that place being built back in 1971 and also the commissioning of the box one Saturday night in September of that same year with the simultaneously decommissioning of the old 1933 LNER box.

I never visited the 1971 Kings Cross power box and to be honest it never interested me to do so although two or three people that did visit it that I knew during the 1990s told me that it wasn't all that bigger than the inside of Camden Road s/box on the North London line where I was at the time.

[rockinjohn]

Hi Mickey just want to clarify a point of whether a 2nd man/passed fireman/fireman in Diesel & or Steam operation (if your aware)had any responsbility to have route knowledge, needing to sign off once learnt or just the fact the individual wanted for possible advancement to learn multiple routes for future use or self education.jj

[Mickey]

Hi Mickey just want to clarify a point of whether a 2nd man/passed fireman/fireman in Diesel & or Steam operation (if your aware)had any responsbility to have route knowledge, needing to sign off once learnt or just the fact the individual wanted for possible advancement to learn multiple routes for future use or self education.jj

Speaking as a one-time secondman on B.R. during the middle 1970s the answer jj is NO as a secondman you weren't required to 'sign for route knowledge' although as a secondman traveling over the same routes most days of the week you would obviously 'know a lot of the route' that they were traveling along. As for drivers they had to obviously sign off the routes that they traveled over (unless you were a Ripple Lane driver haha an in-joke), and also passed fireman had to sign off routes that they drove locos or trains over as well. Secondmen who had been passed out for driving but hadn't been put into the lower grade drivers links and didn't have a full-time drivers position were still referred to as 'passed firemen' during the early/mid-1970s at Kings Cross at any rate although there weren't that many of them around I don't think at 'the cross' when I was there during 1974-75. I recall one driver that I was with on an ECS diagram (Empty Coaching Stock) out of Kings Cross to Hornsey CS one day told me that he WAS a passed fireman and was waiting to get into the driver's link (we had a Brush type 2/class 31 which all driver's at Kings Cross appeared to sign).

[StevieG]

"With regards to the now decommissioned 1971 Kings Cross power box what use is the building now being used for?. Maybe some sort of training center perhaps(?) and are the decommissioned signaling panels still in situ(?) or it is now being used as an S&T storeroom and messroom?. .... "

I've been shown a photo of the main ops room with the whole panel completely gone Mickey. Don't know what that space might now be specifically used for.
Also a photo or so of inside the ground floor Relay Room as it was, together with text that some space had been converted for some various S&T training.

" .... I never visited the 1971 Kings Cross power box and to be honest it never interested me to do so although two or three people that did visit it that I knew during the 1990s told me that it wasn't all that bigger than the inside of Camden Road s/box on the North London line where I was at the time."

The interior of the signal box area for the 1971 IFS panel was smaller than Camden Road Mickey, by about half I'd guess, being about 25' x 18' as a guess.
But that was only one partitioned-off corner of the top floor main ops room which soon came to accommodate the main
NX panel, that was roughly 80' long in an approximate horseshoe shape.
Then once KX itself had been remodelled and resignalled in April 1977, it went onto the main panel, the IFS panel became redundant & was taken away, and the partition removed.

[strang steel]

Is this the one Mickey ?

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/83/08/2c ... a4f274.jpg

This is a fascinating thread, and I can't imagine working an 8 hour shift there, with only dim electric light, coal smoke and rats for company.

I found this on the internet (apologies if it has been posted before).... https://www.lurs.org.uk/articles15_htm_ ... 20HOLE.pdf

[Mickey]

Interesting Stevie thanks. I know from your previous posts over the years that you worked in the 1971 Kings Cross power box around 1989-90 I believe?.

[StevieG]

Interesting Stevie thanks. I know from your previous posts over the years that you worked in the 1971 Kings Cross power box around 1989-90 I believe?.

'79 -'89 Mickey; but had visited the '71 -'77 IFS panel once or twice.

[StevieG]

I can't see your post above harvester due to restriction on this pc but if it's one of the St Pancras boxes pre-1957 two BIG BOXES the station or junction box they're the ones.

Don't know if you saw the posts which followed this one of yours, of 9 months ago Mickey, but no it wasn't a photo of the terminus and approaches' boxes : It was a photo I've seen a couple of times long ago, and was an almost full-frame image of the front of the Up side-sited SP Tunnel box, taken from track level on the Down road.

[Mickey]

I can't see your post above harvester due to restriction on this pc but if it's one of the St Pancras boxes pre-1957 two BIG BOXES the station or junction box they're the ones.

Don't know if you saw the posts which followed this one of yours, of 9 months ago Mickey, but no it wasn't a photo of the terminus and approaches' boxes : It was a photo I've seen a couple of times long ago, and was an almost full-frame image of the front of the Up side-sited SP Tunnel box, taken from track level on the Down road.

Ok, Stevie thanks I believe I have also seen the same photograph as well.

[Mickey]

Interesting Stevie thanks. I know from your previous posts over the years that you worked in the 1971 Kings Cross power box around 1989-90 I believe?.

'79 -'89 Mickey; but had visited the '71 -'77 IFS panel once or twice.

I presume Stevie when you visited or were at Kings Cross 1971 power box the box was staffed during the formative years that the box was opened by former GN signalmen brought up on mechanical signaling probably from around the London area of the GN and out towards Hertfordshire way although I presume former GE signalmen eventually migrated to the box while it was still on the Eastern Region of British Rail during the rest of the 1970s and 1980s and later on still from anywhere in the country after the abolition of British Rail during the mid-1990s. I do recall hearing back in the early 2000s when I was at Camden Road box on the North London line that the box had a large contingent of 'people who had been taken off the street' and who had been 'put through signaling school' that were staffing the box around that time.

[StevieG]

( ( Not at all levelled at you Mickey, but it may help some readers to understand the following : -

Although signalling was controlled from the King's Cross PSB building for about 49 years and 7 months, 1971 - 2021, Its history had effectively been one of being two separate signal boxes : -

- Sept. 1971 - April 1977, the earlier of the two, in a small partitioned-off floor area, controlling the 1930s signalling of King's Cross station and approaches, from an IFS panel, until that area's remodelling and resignalling, when that became the final stage of the large NX panel (see below) ***; - and

- Autumn 1976 (completed April 1977) - April 2021, the second, controlling Biggleswade/Royston - King's Cross from an approx. 80 feet long NX panel (until during its last two years being part superseded by becoming re-controlled to being from York ROC); then closing completely in April 2021 with the latest remodelling and resignalling of King's Cross and Belle Isle, together with re-control of Holloway - New Southgate / Palmers Green, thus placing the whole former PSB area under York ROC.).

... *** - (The 'two boxes' situation was well demonstrated by the fact that, once the 1976 NX panel had taken over the new signalling in the Holloway area, with King's Cross itself still being controlled by the 1971-1977 IFS panel, the two were 'Fringe boxes' to each other, yet were in the same building, separated only by a temporary partition wall.) )


You're just about right regarding being staffed by ex 'GN', then progressively 'GE' signalmen Mickey (several of the latter transferring from the Temple Mills boxes).
Later (was it after Railtrack took over from BR?) people could move between the former BR Regions, and I know that KX gained one man from a large WR Panel box.
But there were no 'off-streeters' during the previously quoted years when I was there, though it seems quite possible that that might have happened later on.