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Signal Box, The A Pictorial History and Guide to Designs Signalling Study Group
The Signal Box A Pictorial History and Guide to Designs Signalling Study Group
Hard cover with Dust Jacket
Copyright 1986
248 Pages
Contents:
Notes for the Readervi
Bibliography vii
Acknowledgementsvii
Introduction viii
Chapter One:The Evolution of the Signal Box 1
Chapter Two:The Railway Companies and the Signalling Industry27
Chapter Three:The Design and Construction of a Signal Box 41
Chapter Four:Special Types of Signal Box69
Chapter Five:The Signalling Contractors and their Box Designs79
Chapter Six:Signal Boxes of the Pre-Grouping Railway Companies109
Chapter Seven:The Signal Box from the 1930s to the 1980s;
`Modern Architecture' and Modern Electronics199
Chapter Eight:Signal Boxes of the Post-Grouping Railway Companies and British Railways 211
Chapter Nine:Signal Boxes of London Transport and Constituents233
Chapter Ten:Signal Boxes of Minor and Industrial Railways238
Index 243
For over a hundred years, from the 1860s to the 1980s, the signal box at station, siding, and junction was one of the most common features of the British railway scene. In the heyday of mechanical signalling around the turn of the century, some 13,000 boxes were in current use, and the total number of boxes ever built was something like double this figure. Now, there are only 2,000 left, and they are disappearing at the rate of a hundred or more each year. This book, the first full study of its subject, comes just in time for the reader to be able to see a good selection of boxes still standing. The older remaining boxes now provide one of the least changed survivals from Victorian industry and, apart from station buildings, which are less fully 'characteristic' of their owning company, the last recognisable inheritance from the pre-grouping railway companies.
It is hoped that this book will be of interest to all students of railway signalling and all who are interested in railway and industrial architecture. Beyond the main subject of signal box design, there is much new information included on the signalling histories of the various railway companies, and the work of the signalling contractors.
The railway companies' Minute Books show that management regarded signalling as being of the same order of importance as motive power. But railway historians in the past were mostly so locomotive-orientated that it was not unusual, even in the 1960s, for histories of railway companies to be published with barely a mention of signalling at all. Since the late 1960s, however, interest in signalling has mushroomed, inspired no doubt by a realisation that mechanical signalling was disappearing rapidly without being properly recorded. The Signalling Record Society was founded in 1969 and has done much to co-ordinate research. Between 1971 and 1977 came the first published studies of the signalling of individual railways: L. G. Warburton's A Pictorial Record of LMS Signals, Adrian Vaughan's A Pictorial Record of Great Western Signalling, and George Pryer's A Pictorial Record of Southern Signals. However, at this period little research had been done on the specific question of signal box architecture. M. A. King's An Album of Pre-Grouping Signal Boxes (1976) was the first attempt at an overall illustration of box designs. Now, after some forty man-years' research, we are pleased to offer this book.
Other detailed studies of the signalling of individual companies are likely to follow over the next few years: R. D. Foster's A Pictorial Record of LNWR Signalling (1983) is already available, and covers LNW box design in full. But we would like to stress here the importance of also covering the history of signalling from a national viewpoint. Many of the most important developments in signalling were the work not of the railway companies but of the signalling contractors, and many boxes, particularly in the 1860s and 1870s, were built by the signalling contractors to their own architectural designs. More generally, the operational and Government requirements for signalling were much the same on one railway as on another, even if different techniques were used by different signal engineers to fulfil those requirements, and different preferences manifested themselves in signal box design.
A further reflection of the comparative lack of interest in signalling until recent years, is the fact that far fewer official or amateur records were made or preserved than in the case of locomotives and rolling stock. Few railway enthusiasts ever photographed a signal box (other than by accident!) prior to the 1960s, and only a small number of official photographs of boxes survive from the pre-grouping period. Nevertheless, many early station views also show
the signal box and, all in all, it has been possible to examine photographs of nearly 10,000 boxes. Architectural drawings were prepared for many boxes, but not where designs were fully standardised, and some survive in the Public Record Offices at Kew and Edinburgh, and in BR and private hands. The railway companies' Minute Books, also now in the Public Record Offices, provide in some cases a large amount of information on dates and contracts, but in other cases are of little use. Also valuable are the Board of Trade Inspection Reports (MT6 and MT29 Classes at Kew), and the railway companies' signalling notices (where they survive). But for a minority of companies all efforts have so far failed to produce any large-scale source for the required information.
In the space available in this book, it is impossible to describe every signal box built for every railway company. In the case of those companies where design was very standardised, the box types described here cover virtually all the boxes built. However, a few companies had no real standardisation of design at many periods, and in such cases only a representative sample can be included, and the reader must be prepared to come across a proportion of boxes which bear little resemblance to those illustrated here. Other companies, such as the LSW, built many boxes to one-off designs, despite having standard designs in use concurrently.
It should be emphasised that this book is not a specialist study of signalling procedures and practices, nor of signalling equipment, although much reference is of course made to both these areas. Were it not for the fact that it would have more than doubled the length of the book, it would have been desirable to include a more detailed history and description of the different types of mechanical locking frame and the other major items of signal box equipment. The type of equipment provided obviously had an effect on the interior, and to a lesser extent the exterior, design and appearance of a signal box. We have given in Chapter 3 some explanation of these effects, but it is admitted that this book gives less attention to the interior of the signal box than might be desirable in an ideal world.
The content of the book is restricted to England, Scotland, and Wales. In some ways this is an artificial restriction, although we hope the reader will understand the necessity for it. In particular, the whole of Ireland was of course a part of the United Kingdom until 1922. The Irish railways relied on the British signalling contractors, and many boxes in Ireland were built to the same contractors' designs as were used on the mainland, with Railway Signal Company boxes being particularly common. Further afield, the British contractors were responsible for the signalling of the railways of Australia, New Zealand, and India, and for much work elsewhere in the world (notably in South America). In the temperate zones, at least, box designs were not dissimilar to UK practice, hut seldom or never were the identical designs used.
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