S&DJR Block Regulations

[RailWest]

I am trying to resolve the thorny question of what Block Regulations were used on the S&DJR, especially in BR days.

 

There are various surviving editions of S&DJR WTT Appendices from the pre-Grouping era, in which Block Regulations and associated bell-codes for both Absolute Block and Electric Train Tablet working are listed specifically. There is also a surviving 1933 Appendix, from which such information appears to be omitted – admittedly my copy is missing a few pages, but IMHO not enough to make a difference. By that date probably both the SR and LMS would have had their own respective publications and I doubt that they would have bothered to replicate them in a S&DJR-related publication.

 

Although the L&SWR/SR did the signalling (infrastructure) on the S&DJR, the MR/LMS were responsible for operations, so might that have included the actual block working? I can find virtually no mention of this aspect at all in any S&D-related records, with one small exception.  I have seen a couple of Special Instructions for locations on the Highbridge line which, although undated, can be presumed as circa-1956/57 by their content; issued by the ‘Southern Operating Area’ of British Railways, they state specifically that those locations worked to the LMR Electric Token Block regulations.

 

It would seem unlikely that the Highbridge line used LMR regulations other than because that was the general practice across the S&DJR as a whole. But is so, then had that been introduced in BR days, or at some earlier date post-Grouping?

 

Also, I am told that ‘Southern Operating Area’ was the contemporary term for what became the Southern Region (as opposed to being a part of the LMR), yet the same documents also refer specifically to Western Region rather than Western Operating Area.

 

Can anyone throw any light on this matter please?

 

 

[phil_sutters]

I can find nothing specifically about signalling in any of my S&D books. The nearest I can find are from loco crew accounts in Peter Smith's 'Mendips Engineman' and 'Footplate over the Mendips'.but they don't seem to refer to specific regulations.