Boxmoor Box?

[Trog]

Gents / Ladies of the opposite sex,

 

Attached is a family photo given me by my cousin, I think that it is of the interior of Boxmoor Signal box that once stood at the south end of the platforms at what is now Hemel Hempstead station. As part of my family once worked on the station there and in the nearby signal boxes, and I think that I can see the gable end of the still existent goods shed through the windows. Does anyone have any idea of the date of the photo or even know who the men pictured might be?

 

 

Edited September 25, 2021 by Trog
Messed up the comment.

[bécasse]

The lever colours are those of the LNWR which remained in use, unchanged, by the LMSR until a revised specification dated May 1934 was put into effect, so the photo is no later than the mid-1930s. The signalman's mode of dress (striped shirt without collar and rolled-up sleeves plus a cloth cap) might suggest a date earlier than this but it is difficult to be certain. 

The other man, obviously in uniform, may well be a district signalling inspector or a station master. I don't know enough about LNWR and LMSR uniforms to be able to say whether it might help with dating, but quite possibly not.

[Michael Hodgson]

I am surprised to see four rotary train describers on the bock shelf next to the block instruments.  

Did the volume of traffic to/from the Harpenden line really justify provision of this equipment?  

On the wall above the window are a number of photos which I can't make out clearly but look as though they might be portraits of the signalman's family?  I wouldn't have thought such adornments were usually encouraged back then.

[The Stationmaster]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I am surprised to see four rotary train describers on the bock shelf next to the block instruments.  

Did the volume of traffic to/from the Harpenden line really justify provision of this equipment?  

On the wall above the window are a number of photos which I can't make out clearly but look as though they might be portraits of the signalman's family?  I wouldn't have thought such adornments were usually encouraged back then.

Surely one each for Up and Down Fast Lines and Up & Down Slow Lines?

[beast66606]

3 hours ago, bécasse said:

The lever colours are those of the LNWR which remained in use, unchanged, by the LMSR until a revised specification dated May 1934 was put into effect, so the photo is no later than the mid-1930s. The signalman's mode of dress (striped shirt without collar and rolled-up sleeves plus a cloth cap) might suggest a date earlier than this but it is difficult to be certain. 

The other man, obviously in uniform, may well be a district signalling inspector or a station master. I don't know enough about LNWR and LMSR uniforms to be able to say whether it might help with dating, but quite possibly not.

 

Which levers / colours (in the photo) do you think were changed after 1934 ?

 

Boxmoor was an early box and remained so until abolition in July 1964 when Watford Junction took control of the area.

 

There are a lot of train describers (TDs) for such a small box - Boxmoor - which is what M.H. says,  but maybe routing information was passed between boxes.

The line to Harpenden was little more than a siding and was severed around 1916 so even when in use it would not merit TDs

 

@Trog - can you read any of the lever numbers on the original ?

 

Photo :

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254385945509

 

[Michael Hodgson]

47 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

Surely one each for Up and Down Fast Lines and Up & Down Slow Lines?

Indeed, but with only one branch those seem unduly elaborate and presumably expensive  instruments, capable of displaying over a dozen routes or train classifications.  Why wouldn't a relatively small junction with just one branch use the standard bell codes - Branch Passenger/Branch Goods?  

[Jeremy Cumberland]

I have no idea what all the equipment is, but Boxmoor had a reasonable amount to control, and the next box north, Bourne End, had crossovers between the slow and fast lines.

 

Here is a link to the thumbnail signal box diagram:

[Trog]

6 hours ago, bécasse said:

The lever colours are those of the LNWR which remained in use, unchanged, by the LMSR until a revised specification dated May 1934 was put into effect, so the photo is no later than the mid-1930s. The signalman's mode of dress (striped shirt without collar and rolled-up sleeves plus a cloth cap) might suggest a date earlier than this but it is difficult to be certain. 

The other man, obviously in uniform, may well be a district signalling inspector or a station master. I don't know enough about LNWR and LMSR uniforms to be able to say whether it might help with dating, but quite possibly not.

 

That might make the Signalman my Great Grandfather Joseph Horne, born in 1869 so he could have been working into the mid 1930's. I think he worked several boxes locally as my Grandmother once told me that she used to come home from school to the railway cottages outside the station and make sandwiches. She would then walk across Boxmoor (A large open field mainly notable as being the site of the grave of the last Highwayman to be hung at the scene of his crime. Look for a white stone near to one of the groups of trees if passing on a train.) to Bourne End box where her father was often working, hand him his sandwiches, then sit on the box steps eating hers.

 

I did ask her what she had seen but all I got back was a vague recollection of black engines, as she had not taken much notice. Strangely the site of Bourne End box was a site I visited not that long before I retired, and the H&S thought that the danger from the trains that I could see as far way as Hemel Station was great enough that I had to request a line blockage to walk under the adjacent road bridge, and I was not even burdened down with two rounds of sandwiches.

 

 

[Trog]

3 hours ago, beast66606 said:

 

@Trog - can you read any of the lever numbers on the original ?

 

 

It is a small photo and not that sharp, I can see that some of the levers have several numbers on them but can not read them.

[beast66606]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Indeed, but with only one branch those seem unduly elaborate and presumably expensive  instruments, capable of displaying over a dozen routes or train classifications.  Why wouldn't a relatively small junction with just one branch use the standard bell codes - Branch Passenger/Branch Goods?  

 

As I've already mentioned the "branch" was severed around 1916, and even before that was little more than a through siding.

 

I wonder if the number of special bell codes was simply too many for the standard modified codes so the describers were provided.

[beast66606]

11 hours ago, Trog said:

 

It is a small photo and not that sharp, I can see that some of the levers have several numbers on them but can not read them.

 

The lever on the left at normal, looks to be No.6 and is possibly green for a distant signal. There is a lever, reversed, which is part black, part red(?) which looks weird as it's not half and half and there'a also a lever to the left of the Bobby, which has had the catch handle removed, meaning it's out of use, either temporarily or permanently, this *could* be associated with the connection to the Harpenden line

 

The SRS diagrams are quite late so it's difficult to match the diagram to the levers in the photo and - and I understand why - the lever numbers are not clear on the SRS view.

 

I'm not 100% convinced it's Boxmoor at this stage.

Edited September 26, 2021 by beast66606
Added comment re SRS diagrams

[The Stationmaster]

17 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Indeed, but with only one branch those seem unduly elaborate and presumably expensive  instruments, capable of displaying over a dozen routes or train classifications.  Why wouldn't a relatively small junction with just one branch use the standard bell codes - Branch Passenger/Branch Goods?  

There was a considerable variety of traffic on the WCML even back in thsoe days so it probably made sense to use train describers rather than elaborate route bell codes as Beast has said.  Better spend money on getting route information correct than sending trains the wrong way.  They might also have been seen as an economy measure/advantage, and handier than relying ona  single needle telegraph (as on the GN mainline),when it came to shorter notice additions and alterations to the timetable.

[Nearholmer]

15 hours ago, beast66606 said:

part black, part red(?)

I’d think that unlikely, because black and red are usually almost indistinguishable on the film used that long ago, and here the contrast is strong.

[beast66606]

9 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I’d think that unlikely, because black and red are usually almost indistinguishable on the film used that long ago, and here the contrast is strong.

 

Disagree

[bécasse]

The two-tone lever is blue over black, widely used in LNWR boxes for any sort of lock other than FPLs which were plain blue.

[Trog]

1 hour ago, bécasse said:

The two-tone lever is blue over black, widely used in LNWR boxes for any sort of lock other than FPLs which were plain blue.

 

The wagon turntable nearest the Up Slow in the yard perhaps?

 

Looked at some old maps on line, in the oldest there are a run of wagon turntables across the sidings and another in line with them in the centre siding. A more recent map perhaps more of an age with the photo just shows those in the sidings, but I suppose that could still require a lock to stop a turning wagon fouling the Up Slow.

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, Trog said:

 

The wagon turntable nearest the Up Slow in the yard perhaps?

 

Looked at some old maps on line, in the oldest there are a run of wagon turntables across the sidings and another in line with them in the centre siding. A more recent map perhaps more of an age with the photo just shows those in the sidings, but I suppose that could still require a lock to stop a turning wagon fouling the Up Slow.

Surely that would be a simple bolt.   

I don't know what colours the LNWR used, but more recent practice wouldn't use blue over black.

 

Beast suggests Black/red, a colour combination I've never seen anywhere, but would seem appropriate if a point and stop signal were worked by the same lever.  Some early installations controlled siding access by what looked like shunt signals but which strictly were called "point indicators" rather than signals.

 

Given a monochrome photo, I really wouldn't like to say what colour levers are, the furthest I would go is to say one lever was a different colour from another based on differing shades of grey.

[bécasse]

2 hours ago, Trog said:

 

The wagon turntable nearest the Up Slow in the yard perhaps?

 

That is certainly the sort of thing. Being the LNWR, the wagon turntable probably wouldn't be released directly from the frame but via an Annett's key, possibly housed at one end of the frame, which would be released with the lever reversed and then used to unlock the turntable.

[bécasse]

2 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

   

I don't know what colours the LNWR used, but more recent practice wouldn't use blue over black.

I have already stated that the LNWR used blue over black, and as far as I know that was the only colour combination, as opposed to a single colour, that the LNWR used (at least with any frequency) on their levers. That colour combination didn't feature in the standard list of lever colours implemented by the LMSR in 1934 and that, apart from the signalman's mode of attire, was the basis for my original statement that the photo predated the mid-1930s.