Heath Town and other signalling diversions

[St Enodoc]

11 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

Still allowing myself to be sidelined onto things that don’t contribute to getting Heath Town progressed.

I wondered how an electric L Frame for Minories would look: how about like this.

 

Paul.

Very nice but...

 

As Minories is in London, shouldn't your Down be Up and vice versa?????

 

P. Edant.

[5BarVT]

22 hours ago, Andy Keane said:

I would need a whole new tutorial to get to grips with modern signalling like this!

Andy

You would be surprised how much you already know from Helston. The locking principles are much the same. The difference is that you can’t see the signals so need an indication of their aspect and you can’t feel the points through the lever so you need to know their position. That covers the bottom two rows.

The F for the points is just an aid so that you know when it is free to move. The extra reds are where the lever operates more than one signal (like the selected discs at Helston).  The numbered indications top left and right hand end are an aid to say which route the points are set for to help avoid clearing the signal for the wrong route. And the Train Ready to Start are as described. 
There you are - tutorial in two paragraphs!

Paul. 

 

[Andy Keane]

1 hour ago, 5BarVT said:

You would be surprised how much you already know from Helston. The locking principles are much the same. The difference is that you can’t see the signals so need an indication of their aspect and you can’t feel the points through the lever so you need to know their position. That covers the bottom two rows.

The F for the points is just an aid so that you know when it is free to move. The extra reds are where the lever operates more than one signal (like the selected discs at Helston).  The numbered indications top left and right hand end are an aid to say which route the points are set for to help avoid clearing the signal for the wrong route. And the Train Ready to Start are as described. 
There you are - tutorial in two paragraphs!

Paul. 

 

You’ll convert me into a signaller of sorts. I probably should get a good book on these things as they do intrigue me. I assume there was a relay based interlocking scheme?

[The Stationmaster]

On 17/06/2023 at 14:01, 5BarVT said:

Still allowing myself to be sidelined onto things that don’t contribute to getting Heath Town progressed.

I wondered how an electric L Frame for Minories would look: how about like this.

 

Paul.

Now if i had taken up my son's  Father's Day outing offer I might well have been having a go on an L frame today.  BTW the LMS  L frames usually had the white route lights immediately above the multiple route signal levers to indicate which route was set

[5BarVT]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

BTW the LMS  L frames usually had the white route lights immediately above the multiple route signal levers to indicate which route was set

Yes.  But . . .   !

Original Lime St had all the routing lights on the top row of the indications, but (I assume) when the slows and fasts were separated at electrification one set of routing light moved to a space at the left hand end of the frame running in two columns vertically.  I wanted to get the TRS lamps in (which at Lime St took the space above the indication panel previously occupied by the magazine describer) and decided they looked better on the top row than down the edge, so I took the Lime St change and extended it further.

Paul.

[5BarVT]

19 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

Very nice but...

 

As Minories is in London, shouldn't your Down be Up and vice versa?????

 

P. Edant.

Oops!

Clearly this is a provincial Minories . . .

Paul.

[61656]

On 17/06/2023 at 14:01, 5BarVT said:

Still allowing myself to be sidelined onto things that don’t contribute to getting Heath Town progressed.

I wondered how an electric L Frame for Minories would look: how about like this.

 

Paul.

If you’re looking for proper distractions I have an NX panel that needs designing!

[ISW]

54 minutes ago, 5BarVT said:

Yes.  But . . .   !

Original Lime St had all the routing lights on the top row of the indications, but (I assume) when the slows and fasts were separated at electrification one set of routing light moved to a space at the left hand end of the frame running in two columns vertically.  I wanted to get the TRS lamps in (which at Lime St took the space above the indication panel previously occupied by the magazine describer) and decided they looked better on the top row than down the edge, so I took the Lime St change and extended it further.

Paul.

Paul,

 

Thanks to your 'panel' modelling, I now recognise some of the bits of the Lime Street signalbox panel in my photo (below) from 1978:

 

Ian

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, 61656 said:

If you’re looking for proper distractions I have an NX panel that needs designing!

I built one of those when I was 15 - thank good ness for Govt and GPO surpus bits & pieces and Woolworths green gloss paint for the panel fascia.  H&M point motors and a variety of signals including some home made out of Airfix signal gantry components.   Correctly working aspect sequences on 3 and 4 aspect signal  = all great fun abut alas I h adn'r t discovered teh secrets of track circuiting on 2 rail so the track had gone when I converted the layout from 3 rail.

[5BarVT]

11 hours ago, 61656 said:

If you’re looking for proper distractions I have an NX panel that needs designing!

I’m sure I heard somewhere that Christleton Jn was an L Frame.

:-)

Paul.

[61656]

3 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

I’m sure I heard somewhere that Christleton Jn was an L Frame.

:-)

Paul.

My L frame knowledge is pretty miserable! I’m thinking simple NX panel, with either basic relay interlocking or maybe something computer based. Christleton Junction is quite complicated - as evidenced by the high level of mis-routings and subsequent short circuits when operating what is essentially currently a ground frame. 

[5BarVT]

14 hours ago, ISW said:

Thanks to your 'panel' modelling, I now recognise some of the bits of the Lime Street signalbox panel in my photo (below) from 1978:

A most interesting photo.  It’s mid way between my photos and one I have from the 40s.  For example, the centre set of routing indications is still present in 78 but not in mine.

Do you have any others from 78 that you would share?

Paul.

[5BarVT]

9 minutes ago, 61656 said:

My L frame knowledge is pretty miserable!

So was mine before I retired!

Paul.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

So was mine before I retired!

Paul.

I was a bit more into Westinghouse A3 frames in earlier years and only came across L frames in the 1990s on the Great Cockcrow Railway

[ISW]

5 hours ago, 5BarVT said:

A most interesting photo.  It’s mid way between my photos and one I have from the 40s.  For example, the centre set of routing indications is still present in 78 but not in mine.

Do you have any others from 78 that you would share?

Paul.

Paul,

 

Unfortunately, that's the only interior photo I took during the visit to the signalbox. It was really dark in the 'box and not conducive to hand-held SLR photography! Although, thinking about it, the camera might have been my old Olympus RC-35, not SLR. Either way, it was too dark to risk lots of wasted film and/or blurred photos.

 

What I can do is drop you a PM with a full-res version (the one I posted was reduced to ~1080 pix wide), so that you might be able to make out some more details.

 

Ian

 

[5BarVT]

Many thanks, PM received.

My photos tell the same story, it dark in there.  Fortunately by the time I went I was digital, so easy to take with and without flash, lots of shots etc etc.

Times move on!

Paul.

[beast66606]

48 minutes ago, ISW said:

Paul,

 

Unfortunately, that's the only interior photo I took during the visit to the signalbox. It was really dark in the 'box and not conducive to hand-held SLR photography! Although, thinking about it, the camera might have been my old Olympus RC-35, not SLR. Either way, it was too dark to risk lots of wasted film and/or blurred photos.

 

What I can do is drop you a PM with a full-res version (the one I posted was reduced to ~1080 pix wide), so that you might be able to make out some more details.

 

Ian

 

 

I didn't take any when I visited 😠 - what a plonker, although I did have a little go at signalling a train.

[St. Simon]

On 05/06/2023 at 20:59, 5BarVT said:

MORE EXPERIMENTING

Had an idea today - if a blue filter turns yellowish light white, why not add a yellow filter to the white light.

So I reprinted the stencils with yellow lettering not white.  That cut down the light transmission so I had to up the brightness.  At 50% duty cycle I had a 50% chance of the the phone getting a photo and 3 attempts gave me these two.

 

The left hand F R is black stencil, yellow lettering and blue on the front, the right R is same but blue stencil.

 

And here, the stencils are swapped.

The effect of the ink is not as much as I expected and the difference in LED is greater.  In theory, one of the LH LEDs is warm white and the other isn’t but there is little difference between them and a lot to the cool white on the right.  Clearly black is far better at blocking out light than the blue (to be expected really).

So black for the stencil.  I have more LEDs on order so I can try different print settings with the same type of LED.  Photos when I’ve done that.

Paul.

 

Hi Paul,

 

I like the stencils, they work really well, looking forward to seeing the whole thing when done!

 

Simon

[5BarVT]

I LIKE GRAPHICS SOFTWARE

Not having a graphics programme, my signalbox diagram had been done in Paint as a bit map.  A bit of a pain and almost impossible to do curves easily.

 

Having found a vector graphics programme to draw bits for the laser cutter, I turned my attention to redrawing the box diagram.  It’s so much easier having a grid to snap to and having the curves function.

 

So much clearer, even at this reduced size, a lot more detail added and much more realistic.

Lever numbering is different as the old diagram is closer to the Cardiff East/West approach needing 48 levers (although I economised on 3 leaving 45 in use).  The new diagram takes a “what if” they used a Lime St approach and gets the number of levers down to 35 (with one signal fewer and one point extra).

It throws up some interesting ‘discussion points’ around GWR track circuit numbering style that I hadn’t anticipated and other locking issues that I haven’t resolved yet.

 

Paul.

[Andy Keane]

That new plan is looking very impressive. Is this to be framed and sit above the lever frame?

[Michael Hodgson]

On 17/06/2023 at 14:01, 5BarVT said:

Still allowing myself to be sidelined onto things that don’t contribute to getting Heath Town progressed.

I wondered how an electric L Frame for Minories would look: how about like this.

 

Paul.

What others might not have noticed is that you've got the correct number of levers.  The main castings for an L frame are modular and will take 11 (and a half at each end that join together on adjacent castings).  So the number of levers on a L frame is a multiple of twelve, minus 1 (ie, 11, 23, 35, 47, ...)

[5BarVT]

51 minutes ago, Andy Keane said:

That new plan is looking very impressive. Is this to be framed and sit above the lever frame?

Possibly . . .

That wasn’t the original plan - there’s a story behind it!

Accurate cutting, drilling and fixing isn’t one of my strong points, but I did want some form of actual signalling control on the layout (eventually!).  I was also expecting that the track layout may change after ‘completion’ as that has been my track record so far. So the thought was that a software display would be easier to alter.

In searching for a programme that could be made to look like a conventional WR panel yet still be amendable as things changed I discovered RR&Co Traincontroller could do what I wanted.

The design aim has changed to an imitation lever frame (with colour light signals as they will be within my construction skill set) and I thought I could construct a row of switches.  Then the box diagram, the indications panel and the Lever Leads could sit on a screen behind the row of switches.  Main difficulty with that was going to be getting the switch spacing to line up with the screen spacing of the indications and leads.

Then I joined WFRM and was introduced to their laser cutter and, as seen earlier, I am hoping to construct the indication panel separately, which just leaves the box diagram.  The granularity of the display is that it needs to sit on a 28x28px grid so it can be an underlay to the software track indications.  By resigning the indications I probably could get them to work on a 2 block display and double the resolution of the picture, but that gives a horizontal display of 2800px - a big screen!  There are other square size resolutions in Traincontroller so I could go to 20px doubled and resize to a 40px grid.  But there is also the option of printing out at a better (readable) resolution, cutting a backboard with holes for the track indications and using LEDs.

Watch this space!

Paul.

[5BarVT]

12 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

What others might not have noticed is that you've got the correct number of levers.  The main castings for an L frame are modular and will take 11 (and a half at each end that join together on adjacent castings).  So the number of levers on a L frame is a multiple of twelve, minus 1 (ie, 11, 23, 35, 47, ...)

That’s why the shunt signal had to go on Heath Town frame.  Although not constrained by the “-1 at the right hand end” requirement, I felt the need to keep to that design rule if I possibly could.

There was also an 8 lever casting so that a frame could be increments of 4 from 7 upwards by mixing in one or two 8 lever segments if required.

Paul.

Edited June 24, 2023 by 5BarVT
Ref to Heath Town.

[61656]

Those signal box drawings look really good. I like the off white background of the original, but otherwise the new version wins hands down. I’m very tempted but still sticking with NX mosaic panel for the moment!

 

Equipment identification always seems to be something of a lottery, even when you know the rules there’s always some individual interpretation. The other thing to consider is that on anything other than a new installation there would have been some alterations undertaken that would be slightly different to the original style. Your propensity for subsequent modification is hardly unprototypical - and a modified panel or drawing would just reflect reality.  

[Michael Hodgson]

2 hours ago, 61656 said:

The other thing to consider is that on anything other than a new installation there would have been some alterations undertaken that would be slightly different to the original style. Your propensity for subsequent modification is hardly unprototypical - and a modified panel or drawing would just reflect reality.  

When signalling was altered there were a number of options as to what to do with the diagram

• a new paper diagram might be drawn, but this cost was typically justified only for a new frame or major alterations
• additions could be overlaid onto the existing, and removals deleted.  These could be prepared in a drawing office as separate pieces of paper to be pasted over the existing diagram; if it is an illuminated diagram, the changes would have to fit correctly with any cut-outs for track-circuit indicator lamps etc
• in the case of an NX panel of the mosaic type, tiles could be replaced, but the new tiles might be a slightly different shade of green.
• for a NX panel on a single sheet of metal, new holes might need to be drilled for additions, but removals might typically had to be plated over.  Sometimes availability issues might mean a differnt style of switch had to be used.

Diagram styles varied considerably but they often included a list of spare levers, generally in numerical order.  Changes could mean that spares were brought into use and/or previously used levers might become spare (the levers would be repainted as necessary), but it also meant that numbers had to be erased or added to this list.  Often additions were at the end of the list, so no longer in numerical order.  Sometimes these changes were neatly drawn in the same style by S&T draughtsmen, but sometimes they were fairly crudely done on site.

 

It is sometimes possible to do signalling archeology to discover an older layout - by peeling off paper stuck over a diagram, or unscrewing a lever plate to see what is on the other side - redundant Traffolite plates were often turned over and re-inscribed and reused (not necessarily on the same lever)

 

It was not unsusual for obsolete names to remain in use, for example a cattle siding might be so called long after the traffic had ceased, or a private siding might be shown using a previous trading name of the company concerned.