The LNER Encyclopedia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19435464

Another move towards full automation, drivers next?

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52A wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19435464

Another move towards full automation, drivers next?

Excuse me while i nip out over the weekend to install a new mechanical facing point with mechanical detection. There is talk of me getting involved with at least three more this year. The article makes it sound like the signalboxes wont be there when i do it.

Edit to add my efforts with mechanical signalling last year..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32297024@N ... 8467397817

The only thing that isn't new is the lever in the box.

Long live mechanical signalling.

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They are assembled as a complete frame and stand in my backyard waiting for something to happen to them...

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R. pike wrote:

52A wrote:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19435464

Another move towards full automation, drivers next?

Excuse me while i nip out over the weekend to install a new mechanical facing point with mechanical detection. There is talk of me getting involved with at least three more this year. The article makes it sound like the signalboxes wont be there when i do it.

Edit to add my efforts with mechanical signalling last year..

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32297024@N ... 8467397817

The only thing that isn't new is the lever in the box.

Long live mechanical signalling.

I bet that Bellwater Junction was a very busy box to work on summer weekends in the first 70 years of the 20th century.

I would have loved to have spent a summer Saturday by the line there, but it was a bit far to cycle when half the services passed close to the back garden of where I was living anyway.

On a visit to England last week, I had occasion to go up to Cambridge from Stevenage and was gladdened to see that the signal box at Foxton was still there and looking intact. Don't know what the inside holds these days, but I do hope it stays there.

I see also that they're getting on well with the Hitchin Flyover earthworks (or chalkworks ).

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Although there are still at least three sets of points and associated shunt signals and routes at Foxton, including those giving access to the long siding 'light railway' to Barrington (Does it see any traffic these days? - It don't think it looks used.), the box's modern-day role is known as 'G.B.' : - Not 'Great Britain' , but 'Gate Box'; that is, it controls the quartet of level crossing barriers on the adjacent 'skew'-angled busy A10 road, which is it's only function now AFAIK.
The points and main signal controls are all operated by Cambridge power box (signal prefix 'CA'), as is the line's signalling generally, west as far as Royston (exclusive [about 1/2-mile short of the by-pass road's underbridge] ), : But Foxton GB has slot ('dual') control of all the CA signals which allow trains over the crossing.
The adjacent old Goods Shed building also survives looking pretty well intact - I can't say whether it's currently in private use though.

Why the crossing's never been 'CCTV'd I don't know; possibly because it's such a busy road, and/or the fact that a side road joins the A10 by means of an accute-angled 'T'-junction immediately on the approach side of the southern barriers of the crossing.
Yet the crossing's current form is simpler than in mechanical signalling days when the same side road junction was actually then an angled crossroads at the gates, with the side road continuing over the railway by a second (narrow) crossing sandwiched between the box and the main road, so the signalman then had two crossings to deal with, within about 40 yards of the box's eastern end, and both protected by gates; the nearer (narrow) crossing's were, I'm sure, single 'sympathetic' (connected and moving in unison) gates, hand-operated. I've a feeling the main road's gates then (double ones [= total 4], I think) were also hand-operated 'sympathetic's.

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Well, regardless of usage nowadays, let's hope all these old boxes remain. Even if they are nothing more than a shadow of their former selves, they remain icons of an era we all loved and, in my book, should be 'listed' buildings.

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I believe Heckington signal box, between Sleaford and Boston, is also listed.