This is probably a question for Richard Pike as I saw this picture on his fotopic site, http://richard2890.fotopic.net/p55693668.html but someone else might know the answer anyway. I'd like to know the age of the this signalling diagram. Is this likely to have been unchanged since the first installation of colour light signals in the 1930s? Would the ECML originally have been signalled with signals with separate lamps as opposed to searchlight signals with mechanical lenses? From my untrained eye I would conclude that signal 14 in the diagram is a searchlight. Does anyone have any photos of 1930s signals? I have only seen searchlights and those on gantries at Kings Cross.
Alan
1930s Colour light signalling
Moderators: 52D, Tom F, Rlangham, Atlantic 3279, Blink Bonny, Saint Johnstoun, richard
Re: 1930s Colour light signalling
Hi Smudger, Liverpool street was resignalled by the GER with colour lights I have some photos I will take a look through my bits. May take a while.
don't forget about the Great Eastern Railway
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R. pike
- GNR C1 4-4-2
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Re: 1930s Colour light signalling
Auto signalling came about quite early on the GN. Check out Hitchin South and Stevenge North diagrams on my site and also Tempsford - St Neots. The former section used searchlights, motor operated mechanical searchlights and motor operated semaphores and the latter colourlights. The GN&GE joint had auto signalling between Helpringham and Sleaford South, again using semaphores. Colourlights were rife on the GC, Ashby Magna and Ruddington are good examples on my site. Marylebone had an unusual arrangement where yellow meant the platform was occupied to a certain point and green meant it was clear to the loco release crossovers... The use of different heads for home and distant indications like at Greenwood was more unusual though.
A mention of Barford Autos in 1937..
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docume ... rd1937.pdf
A mention of Barford Autos in 1937..
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/docume ... rd1937.pdf
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StevieG
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Re: 1930s Colour light signalling
I would guess the general style of the Greenwood diagram would date from the 1930s introduction of the colour-lights to Potters Bar (closing Hadley Wood, Ganwick and Mimms 'boxes). The specific copy of the diagram pictured is from around 1957/8 when the works for the Greenwood-Potters Bar quadrupling were well under way (note the track configuration at top right, where the Up Main has already been realigned to become the eventual Up Slow, and the Up Fast re-commences as a right-hand turnout, with temporary splitting
semaphore signal).
I would agree that 14 signal is drawn as a searchlight. It could have been a later alteration, replacing a semaphore distant signal.
The LNER scheme's post-war-commissioned colour-lights at Liverpool Street were Siemens ("SGE") products of multi-lens type, as were the almost identical 1932 SGE signals at King's Cross.
BR's Eastern Region also liked using searchlights during its first twenty or so years, as used (down south) in places such as Barking, Shenfield-Southend Victoria and Shenfield-Colchester-Clacton, Hackney-Chingford, Bury Street Jn.-Southbury- Hertford E. & Bishops Stortford (I believe I read somewhere that the LNER put in the Hackney-Enfield Town searchlights in the late '30s), the Greenwood-Potters Bar quadrupling (but, oddly, not round the Potters Bar station area, nor I think, for Liverpool St.- Brentwood).
I think, though I'm less familiar with the areas, the LNER's better-known schemes, and their like, at Doncaster, Leeds, York and Newcastle, also employed searchlight signal units.
There were also numerous instances where searchlights replaced individual semaphores, often when the functions of a stop signal of one box and that of the distant for the next box, were being newly combined in one signal.
Greenwood 14 reads on the diagram as such a case, the change from yellow to green on that signal being its Distant function, a part of New Barnet North's Starting signal, controlled red-yellow from there.
In many cases the searchlights employed in the above schemes were of the 4-aspect type, having the additional black/yellow-only additional upper lens, allowing the signal to display the double yellow aspect.
There were even a few instances of 3-aspect searchlights being converted to 4. I know of one at New Barnet South which had already been acting also as Oakleigh Park's distant, which later gained the extra lens in order to act as an outer distant for Cemetery box, two boxes away, approximately doubling the available braking distance to a Stop at Cemetery's Home, presumably for facilitating a linespeed increase.
(Edited twice for additional content.)
semaphore signal).
I would agree that 14 signal is drawn as a searchlight. It could have been a later alteration, replacing a semaphore distant signal.
The LNER scheme's post-war-commissioned colour-lights at Liverpool Street were Siemens ("SGE") products of multi-lens type, as were the almost identical 1932 SGE signals at King's Cross.
BR's Eastern Region also liked using searchlights during its first twenty or so years, as used (down south) in places such as Barking, Shenfield-Southend Victoria and Shenfield-Colchester-Clacton, Hackney-Chingford, Bury Street Jn.-Southbury- Hertford E. & Bishops Stortford (I believe I read somewhere that the LNER put in the Hackney-Enfield Town searchlights in the late '30s), the Greenwood-Potters Bar quadrupling (but, oddly, not round the Potters Bar station area, nor I think, for Liverpool St.- Brentwood).
I think, though I'm less familiar with the areas, the LNER's better-known schemes, and their like, at Doncaster, Leeds, York and Newcastle, also employed searchlight signal units.
There were also numerous instances where searchlights replaced individual semaphores, often when the functions of a stop signal of one box and that of the distant for the next box, were being newly combined in one signal.
Greenwood 14 reads on the diagram as such a case, the change from yellow to green on that signal being its Distant function, a part of New Barnet North's Starting signal, controlled red-yellow from there.
In many cases the searchlights employed in the above schemes were of the 4-aspect type, having the additional black/yellow-only additional upper lens, allowing the signal to display the double yellow aspect.
There were even a few instances of 3-aspect searchlights being converted to 4. I know of one at New Barnet South which had already been acting also as Oakleigh Park's distant, which later gained the extra lens in order to act as an outer distant for Cemetery box, two boxes away, approximately doubling the available braking distance to a Stop at Cemetery's Home, presumably for facilitating a linespeed increase.
(Edited twice for additional content.)
BZOH
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