Clickety-Clack Destination Boards

[Horsetan]

The dot-matrix ones looked like they were electro-mechanical as well, as each dot was a flap that turned horizontal or vertical depending on whether "on" or "off". They had them on bus destinations as well. When they failed - which they did! - you would get odd missing dots, or spots that stayed on.....

[ForestPines]

The Edinburgh Waverley one was replaced in the late 90s, if I recall correctly.

 

In Amsterdam they are still used at some tram stops to display "next tram" info, although they seem to be being phased out in favour of more modern indicators similar to those used for buses in some UK cities. The attached photo shows the indicators at Amsterdam Centraal, for services via the Nieuwezijdes Voorburgwal. The indications seem to be set manually - whilst I was there I noticed one indicator showing what looked like an "obvious typo" for a couple of minutes before it was corrected: a departure time of 12:50 that should have been 12:05.

 

[superb_50002]

Terminal 1 at NAIA airport in Manila still has Solari boards. Plus it also feels a bit like Euston back in the 80s...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NAIA_Airport.jpg

[Horsetan]

Would be funny if this could be replicated in 4mm scale

[TheSignalEngineer]

New St showing a sense of humour, or is it optimism, in 1986. Just look at the connecting stations off the 1610 to Norwich.

 

[keefer]

all the way to eastern europe on 'light refreshments'

[Edwin_m]

Not sure how else they are meant to use those destinations, so the person with the sense of humour must have been the one who specified the flaps!

[Gwiwer]

The Solari boards improved upon the earlier generation of manual boards by having the ability to show many more stations (or messages) per unit than did the older wooden ones with enamel (and a few later plastic replacement) nameplates.

 

IIRC the Solari units had 50 flaps which gave plenty of flexibility in terms of what they could display. Any given location might have myriad different permutations however - they were not "all the same". So for example the Waterloo installation had suburban destinations on the left hand panels and main line on the right. In those days the Windsor Lines ran into their own platforms and had their own remote Solari board. So "Putney" could not be displayed on the "suburban" panels but "Woking" was possible on any display. Stations closer to the location of the panel would only be listed on the upper flaps - there was no need for example to have "Battersea Park" anywhere other than on the top flap of the Victoria displays, though it was on a few more just in case. Just as the series of calling-point units could be matched to their location so could the ultimate destination boards at the top of the display. Not many stations required more than 50 ultimate destinations to be available but some had a selection of unlikely ones on the panels "just in case". Brighton (which had direct trains to Manchester) had Liverpool Lime Street and Wolverhampton (but no through trains) as examples though no-one had thought of through trains to Bedford when that installation first went up!

 

Each flap unit could be removed independently for servicing or renewal; the latter was necessary only when the thing broke down completely (as they did increasingly with age) or if wholesale service changes required all-new stations or messages to be added. It was normal for the lower few flaps to not have station names but to carry supplementary messages instead such as "Buffet Car" or the dreaded "Bus Service For Part Of Journey". Each unit could display a clearly-legible single-line of text or a hard-to-read message spread over two lines of quite small type. The limitations of size meant that trains serving a large number of stations or those which split en route often required two adjacent panels to be used for their display. That is still a limitation of today's electronic systems and I personally prefer two panels with the information displayed constantly to a scrolling display alternating between at least two different displays.

 

Most displays were white lettering on black flaps though additional information such as "Front 4 cars only" were often in yellow. Catering services were usually advised at the very bottom with white text on a red flap. Uncommon messages or displays for special services were carried in their own colour scheme. Red lettering on a white flap suggested service disruption for example while a Pullman train such as the VSOE was shown with cream letters on an umber flap. There were rarely-seen displays covering all manner of possible operations and it was fascinating to try and read each flap as they turned over (often very quickly) and remember a few of the "specials".

 

There was a clicking or whirring noise as the panels blanked following a departure and you then waited expectantly for the next train to be shown. As technology improved so the rate at which the flaps could be "stepped" and the display changed could be accelerated. The advent of a matrix of single-letter units also made possible the display of any form of custom message.

 

Stepping back briefly to revisit the earlier generation of departure boards those at Waterloo were definitely operated manually via punched cards; the card was placed beneath a series of metal rods which either went through a punched hole or not when a lever was pulled down and the display was set up accordingly. It could (and often was) "tweaked" manually suggesting stopping patterns had changed but not the cards or that cards didn't exist for every single permutation. Hilsea was wound up manually as one example I recall - back in the day very few trains stopped there. The large board at Brighton was entirely manual however and had hexagonal units rotated by hand (officially from a little lever to the side but often by simply turning the display panel itself) with five station names affixed to each plus a blank. This of course limited the flexibility and while only west coast stations were featured on the two western panels and east coast on the eastern ones the main line displays still contained a few inter-regional gems which were - at the time - never ever used. The third panel from the left (west) featured a very choice selection indeed including stations through to Plymouth via Okehampton for the erstwhile daily through train. The east coast units also had displays for stations to Tunbridge Wells and Oxted via Uckfield.

Edited July 4, 2012 by Gwiwer

[keefer]

didn't glasgow central go straight to dot-matrix from the old manual boards? ISTR it being newsworthy that the 'old fashioned' boards worked by one bloke were being done away with, in late 80s?

[Gwiwer]

didn't glasgow central go straight to dot-matrix from the old manual boards?

Ah cannae ramimber th'noo

[phil gollin]

.

 

I found this whilst looking around on the web :-

 

http://www.nrm.org.uk/OurCollection/RunningTheRailway/CollectionItem.aspx?objid=1978-7336&pageNo=416#panel-1

 

http://www.nrm.org.uk/globalmedia/pic1_1978-7336_2.png

 

http://www.nrm.org.uk/globalmedia/pic_1978-7336_2.png

 

http://www.nrm.org.uk/globalmedia/pic2_1978-7336_2.png

 

.

[keefer]

pic of the manual boards at glasgow central on wikipedia

 

the wiki article says it lost them in 1986, replaced by what sounds like dot-matrix type, then got LED boards in 2005.

although the main station never had solari boards, i've a feeling the sub-surface lines may have had solari 'monitor' style displays on the platforms?

[Horsetan]

......Each flap unit could be removed independently for servicing or renewal; the latter was necessary only when the thing broke down completely (as they did increasingly with age) or if wholesale service changes required all-new stations or messages to be added. ......

 

Gives a whole new meaning to "getting in a flap".

[keefer]

the sept.1976 RO mentions the "new £60,000 Solari 'falling-leaf' platform indicator has come into use above platforms 14-16 at Waverley." also says 'slave' units have been placed in the travel centre and various platform gates around the station.

they were maybe still getting the hang of it though, when an abdn-york service had all stations correct, but catering was shown as 'from carstairs only'!

 

same issue mentions prep work for the replacement of the boards at waterloo in july - "the three existing indicators, two of which date back to 1922 [and] the bostwick wrought-iron barrier gates are all for sale." - these must be the ones phil linked to above

[Guest jim s-w]

Another pic of the new st board, this one from 1987

 

Pic © midgpee and used with permission.

 

Actually this chap has uploaded loads of pictures of this sort of thing of various stations from the late 70's - the 90's and his Flickr account is well worth a look - see

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/18578675@N02/with/6872327821/#photo_6872327821

 

Cheers

 

Jim

Edited August 4, 2012 by jim s-w

[RJS1977]

This one's in the McAlpine collection:

 

[John M Upton]

That is the one from Brighton which by bizzarre coincidence I and my colleagues were discussing tonight along with the wonders of Solari indicators!!

http://www.mybrightonandhove.org.uk/page_id__7748_path__0p115p212p923p.aspx shows a rather good shot of it in situ.

Edited August 4, 2012 by John M Upton

[Horsetan]

There is now a P4 layout - Shelvington - which uses a working Solari board:

 

 

 

Quite remarkable.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Horsetan

[RJS1977]

One idea I had for creating a working model Solari panel was to use a cheap smartphone running a Remote Desktop app or similar, which could interface with a laptop running the display. The smartphone could be mounted in a surround designed to simulate the Solari frame.

[Horsetan]

One idea I had for creating a working model Solari panel was to use a cheap smartphone running a Remote Desktop app or similar, which could interface with a laptop running the display. The smartphone could be mounted in a surround designed to simulate the Solari frame.

Thing is, the smartphone display would be a bit one-dimensional.

[RJS1977]

Two-dimensional, surely?

 

In 4mm scale I think any form of mechanical indicator would be out of the question.

[Horsetan]

Two-dimensional, surely?....

It would probably look a bit like this:

 

http://youtu.be/B-xL2-cSFZo

[Kelly]

I took some video of the Shelvington Solari destination display. I'll see tomorrow or later in the week if it is good enough to bother sharing and upload to youtube if so (as usual my videos are unlisted on youtube, so links will be posted somewhere I'm sure (probably the Scaleforum RMweb gallery description).

[Horsetan]

I took some video of the Shelvington Solari destination display....

 

So did I.

 

I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to learn how it was built from scratch....

[RJS1977]

The Solari split flap indicators were worked by stepping motors. Before a new train was set up the flaps zeroed then each one went a specific number of steps to show times, platforms, destination and calling stations etc.

 

These are not the same as the old Southern one such as at Waterloo shown in this picture http://www.nzetc.org/etexts/Gov02_08Rail/Gov02_08Rail021a.jpg

 

Do I understand from that that they would wind back to the beginning again and then forwards each time, even if the next destination was further down the list than the previous one?