Colourlight Signal Posts - Alternative Designs

[iands]

Hi all,

 

I'm not sure if this topic has been raised elsewhere, and apologies if it has, but I thought the attached photo might be of interest to some on RMweb. It is of a signal on the Up platform at Brockley station (taken in 2007). The signal post is made of a couple of short lengths of bull-head rail. I have come across examples in my railway career of bull-head rail being utilised as a support structure for items of equipment, but not a coulour light. There may have been other examples in the local area, but were similar structures used in other areas/regions?

 

Regards, Ian.

[Edwin_m]

This was common for semaphores on the Southern but I don't recall seeing it for a colour light.  However the Southern seems to have been more prone to re-using existing structures for new signals, whereas other Regions tended to rip them all out and plant new ones.  I'm thinking particularly of some of the concrete gantries for early colour lights from the 20s and 30s, retained on re-signalling in the 70s and 80s. 

[bécasse]

There were odd examples of c/l signal heads mounted on standard Southern rail-built posts, and, of course, fringe semaphore stop signals with c/l "distant" heads mounted below them were often on rail-built posts. This example at Brockley, though, is definitely non-standard.

[iands]

Apologies, just realised I posted the same photo twice - finger trouble at my end.

 

Regards, Ian.

[phil-b259]

This was common for semaphores on the Southern but I don't recall seeing it for a colour light.  However the Southern seems to have been more prone to re-using existing structures for new signals, whereas other Regions tended to rip them all out and plant new ones.  I'm thinking particularly of some of the concrete gantries for early colour lights from the 20s and 30s, retained on re-signalling in the 70s and 80s. 

 

Those curved concret gantries actually date from the 1950s. They were re-used in the mid 1970s resignalling that saw London Bridge power box take over the areas concerned - which has now been superseded by Three Bridges ROC (although the signals remain unchanged other than the i.d. plate).

 

You may be suprised to hear that while London Bridge and Victoria received colour lights in the 1920s / 1930s, the rest of the ex LBSCR network within London kept semaphores*. As with many other things, the Southern Railway was aware that they needed replacing but a little thing called WW2 intervened before anything was done.

 

* The Southern railway did resignal the Brighton main line to co-incide with electrification in the early 1930s, BUT as with today they simply started the modernisation where the previous suburban electrification had finished - namely Coulsdon North. As such the busy lines through the likes of Purley, East Croydon, Norwood Junc, Forrest Hill, Norbury, Balham and Clapham Junction were still signalled using traditional block bells and semaphores untill the 1950s saw the x LBSCR mechanical boxes closed.

 

As such the bit of the BML that really needed colour light signalling, bering in mind the London 'Smogs' was the very last to get it!