Colour Light Signal Landings

[ikcdab]

I am building some colour lights for the new layout, which will appear here soon!

The layout is very loosely based on Southern practice in the 1960s...or maybe the 1970s, who knows.

I am currently making a platform starter, which is 2 x 3 aspect heads plus theatre indicators. I have made the upright of the gantry from H sections and plain girders for the horizontals. I am going to be mounting Berko heads onto the gantry.

But what would the walkways be made of? Semaphore signals had wooden treads, is it the same for early(ish) colour lights or would they have been steel plates? If so, was it an open grid or chequerplate?

Or did it vary and can i apply rule number one?

In other news, elsewhere I am using a ratio pratt-truss gantry (again with Berko heads) and this does have wooden walkways....

Thanks.

[TheSignalEngineer]

I don't know what the SR did but the LMR used hardwood planks for their signal gantries in the 1960s. I remember putting up some with chequered plates and open grids later, but the latter not on OLE lines in my days.

Edited November 25, 2019 by TheSignalEngineer

[ikcdab]

27 minutes ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

I don't know what the SR did but the LMR used hardwood planks for their signal gantries in the 1960s. I remember putting up some with chequered plates and open grids later, but the latter not on OLE lines in my days.

 

Thank you. Photos are difficult to come by!

So if you were installing wooden treads, were these laid longitudinally or crossways? I have examples of both!

[Mike Storey]

Good question - on the SED I had assumed they were always metal.

[ikcdab]

18 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

Good question - on the SED I had assumed they were always metal.

 

i guess its obvious that latterly the treads would be metal, either a grid or chequerplate. However, during the transition from semaphore to colour lights, i suspect that the signal department would be tempted to use wooden treads as that had been the custom until then....

i just cant find any more info....

[ikcdab]

27 minutes ago, Mike Storey said:

Good question - on the SED I had assumed they were always metal.

 These look wooden, but of course are quite early...

 

[Mike Storey]

18 minutes ago, ikcdab said:

 These look wooden, but of course are quite early...

 

 

Indeed, but a curious shot, that. No "X's" on either the new or the old. I can only presume this was a publicity shot, taken just at changeover.

 

[ikcdab]

and this one definitely has wooden treads laid cross-wise...

[The Stationmaster]

On 25/11/2019 at 18:41, ikcdab said:

I am building some colour lights for the new layout, which will appear here soon!

The layout is very loosely based on Southern practice in the 1960s...or maybe the 1970s, who knows.

I am currently making a platform starter, which is 2 x 3 aspect heads plus theatre indicators. I have made the upright of the gantry from H sections and plain girders for the horizontals. I am going to be mounting Berko heads onto the gantry.

But what would the walkways be made of? Semaphore signals had wooden treads, is it the same for early(ish) colour lights or would they have been steel plates? If so, was it an open grid or chequerplate?

Or did it vary and can i apply rule number one?

In other news, elsewhere I am using a ratio pratt-truss gantry (again with Berko heads) and this does have wooden walkways....

Thanks.

Translate 'earlyish'  The photos posted above  are either pre-war (the old with the semaphore signals in or probably pre-war but possibly early post-war.   Some pre-war SR colour lights from the mid -late 1930s lasted well into the 1970s and soem structures from then lasted much longer but with new signal heads etc.  Most of the early ones (i.e. from, mainly, the 1920s) went in the 1960s although some lasted into the early 1970s   So do you want SR 1930s practice, or SR 1950s practice, or SR 1960s practice, and which Division are you modelling (i.e Eastern, Central, or Western?).

 

I have photos of some 1930s structures with new heads as they appeared in the early 1990s, some of 1950s signals with minor mods,  but none of any pre-war signals.  It all depends which you want?

 

[ikcdab]

2 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

Translate 'earlyish'  The photos posted above  are either pre-war (the old with the semaphore signals in or probably pre-war but possibly early post-war.   Some pre-war SR colour lights from the mid -late 1930s lasted well into the 1970s and soem structures from then lasted much longer but with new signal heads etc.  Most of the early ones (i.e. from, mainly, the 1920s) went in the 1960s although some lasted into the early 1970s   So do you want SR 1930s practice, or SR 1950s practice, or SR 1960s practice, and which Division are you modelling (i.e Eastern, Central, or Western?).

 

I have photos of some 1930s structures with new heads as they appeared in the early 1990s, some of 1950s signals with minor mods,  but none of any pre-war signals.  It all depends which you want?

 

thanks for the reply. I cannot be as specific as that...the layout isnt as precise as that. say 1950s practice. Not sure what division, its somethuing surburban, so south london-ish.

cannot be more precise than that!

 

[bécasse]

Any photos of Southern colour light signals with short hoods predate 1940, when the hoods on all such signals were changed as a matter of extreme urgency (the work was even continued during air raids) to long ones as an ARP. (The beams were already reduced in intensity during the "warning" period by switching domestic light bulbs into the circuit in series with the signal bulbs.)

 

The photo of the colour light signals, together with mechanical signals they were replacing, was probably taken on Sunday 1 December 1929, the day the new London Bridge box opened. It is certainly no later than 1930 as the c/l signals have no identification plates, something that was soon rectified in the light of experience. London Bridge was probably the first of the new boxes where the inability of drivers to identify which signal they were standing at became a problem as the previous boxes had all covered smaller areas where the bobbies could see all the trains they signalled.

[Mike Storey]

41 minutes ago, ikcdab said:

thanks for the reply. I cannot be as specific as that...the layout isnt as precise as that. say 1950s practice. Not sure what division, its somethuing surburban, so south london-ish.

cannot be more precise than that!

 

 

In that case, use whatever surfacing you want!!

[bécasse]

Actually, if it is 1950s and south London, the whole signal gantry could well be pre-cast concrete, significant numbers of such gantries being installed in south London during the early 1950s. Other gantries would unquestionably have had wooden slats on their landings at that time - and colour light signals were still rare, even East Croydon entered that decade with semaphore signalling.