GWR signal box question.

[swiftbeam]

Hi,

 

I am looking to buy a Peco LK-715 GWR signal box (O gauge), but want to mod it a little.

I have seen some signal boxes have a small wooden room jutting out the side like the Metcalfe P0330 card kit (00 gauge).

Can anybody tell me what the little room on the side is and could it have been feasible for a prototype like the Peco kit to have had one fitted?

 

Thanks.

[The Stationmaster]

I'm not familiar with the kit but have found a couple of view of the interior which indicates there might be enough room to do what you are thunking about.  The 'little house' on the end was exactly that - the toilet which position allowed it to be immediately accessed from the working floor with no need to go very far.   They were very uncommon on GWR design signalboxes (if there were any at all?) and the toilet was often either downstairs in the locking room area, or in a separate adjacent structure, or the Signalman had to use the station toilets if the signal box was at a station with reasonable access to the station platform.

 

However other companies did go in for them and as the kit is reminiscent of a contractor's design you could use it for another  company and add a toilat at either the back end of the staircase landing (the most likely place - as in the Metcalfe kit) or even at the other end of the structure. 

[Phil Bullock]

I wonder if you need to differentiate between boxes built by the GWR and those either that were installed by pre grouping companies, including those supplied by external companies on GWR territory eg Saxby and Farmer.

 

Suspect some of the small side rooms are exactly that …. The smallest room! (WC). Definitely not the case at Henwick in Worcester a few years ago where a WC is provided in a separate hut…. 
 

Signalman locked in lavatory

 

Synchronous post with The stationmaster …. Sorry Mike ! 

Edited October 2, 2022 by Phil Bullock

[Michael Hodgson]

Most signalboxes are entered from a landing at the top of the stairs, directly onto the operating floor as Peco 715.  However a few boxes had internal staircases, so the entrance was downstairs. 

Mains water was not always available, especially in isolated rural locations in the early days.   Some boxes had a toilet added as an afterthought at a later date, prior to which the signalman used the station facilities (if applicable) .... or the bushes behind the box if not!  This was normal for outdoor workers before the 20th century.  Chemical toilets were provided sometimes, some companies built a brick outhouse, others used prefabricated concrete structures.  Note that if the toilet was on the landing, the entrance door to the operating floor would usually still be from the landing.  The toilet might be accessed from the landing (meaning two doors at the top of the stairs and you had to go out onto the landing to enter the toilet) or it might have been a door internal to the box instead.  There could of course be a toilet internal to the main structure, either upstairs or down, that  would be typically apply to a box of more recent design.

 

Some boxes had an entrance porch.  If there are windows to the door (as P0330) it's got to be a porch not the toilet!  I doubt that particular product is modelled on any real GWR box however, and the same is true of many signalboxes available from the trade.  You also don't have big side windows to a toilet - only something big enough to admit light, typically at the rear.  Some boxes got a combined porch/toilet add-on - in which case there was also an inner door, and the additional structure had to be big enough room to provide a toilet as well as a porch - like this one https://www.oxforddiecast.co.uk/products/signal-box-gwr-os76r002

 

[kevinlms]

55 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

 

Signalman locked in lavatory

 

Could have been much worse for the signalman, none acknowledgement by the signalman to calls, might mean a heart attack or something similar. As it is the signalman, probably just keeps a new nickname!

[Phil Bullock]

Agreed …. Assume there are lone worker protocols to cover such an eventuality?

[RailWest]

3 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

.....  Some boxes got a combined porch/toilet add-on - in which case there was also an inner door, and the additional structure had to be big enough room to provide a toilet as well as a porch - like this one https://www.oxforddiecast.co.uk/products/signal-box-gwr-os76r002....

 

I don't recall ever seeing a box with a half-depth brick extension under the landing like that - I wonder what box was the prototype for it ?

[Phil Bullock]

47 minutes ago, RailWest said:

I don't recall ever seeing a box with a half-depth brick extension under the landing like that - I wonder what box was the prototype for it ?

I thought that too….and suspected licence applied to make the steps more robust. But wary as there is a prototype for everything….

[RailWest]

29 minutes ago, Phil Bullock said:

I thought that too….and suspected licence applied to make the steps more robust. But wary as there is a prototype for everything….

 

No doubt there is....but far too often manufacturers pick a one-off as the basis for their models and then suddenly you see them on far too many layouts in totally unsuitable places :-(

[Steamport Southport]

I did wonder what prototype the GWR signal box is based on. Maybe one altered later on when the lavatory was  obsolete.

 

https://www.metcalfemodels.com/product/po330-00-h0-g-w-r-signal-box-kit/

 

I've identified a few of the Metcalfe kits. Some are GCR/CLC such as the station (Widnes and Sankey are both like that) and the other signal box is LNWR (some of which also ended up on the CLC as replacements for older boxes and possibly why it's green). I think the goods shed might also be GCR.

https://www.metcalfemodels.com/product/po237-00-h0-country-station/

 

https://www.metcalfemodels.com/product/po233-00-h0-signal-box-kit/

 

 

 

 

Jason

[Wheatley]

7 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

Agreed …. Assume there are lone worker protocols to cover such an eventuality?

There are. The dilemma is when to apply them when there are no trains due (and therefore nothing spoiling) and the signalman has a reputation for "just nipping out ..." for a minute. 

 

One box I worked had a very anonymous looking list of phone numbers in the wall, no names, just initials next to them. If anyone ever asked it was an old list of fogsignalmen, it was actually a list of hostelries near the next box along in descending order of likelihood of Don being there during the two hour gap between trains on a Saturday evening. The last number on the list was the bookies across the road from the adjacent box in the opposite direction. 

Edited October 2, 2022 by Wheatley

[TheSignalEngineer]

16 minutes ago, Wheatley said:

it was actually a list of hostelries near the next box along in descending order of likelihood of Don being there during the two hour gap between trains on a Saturday evening.

I remember doing a job a one box around 1966. It had been reduced to a gate box with the coming of MAS and the signalman that day was an old friend of my grandad. At lunchtime the gang went across the road to the station hotel which was right opposite the box. The lengthman arrived at the box and went inside to make a brew and eat his sandwiches. Joe the signalman came across to join us. About ten minutes later a red flag appeared out of the box window . Joe put his pint down, went to the box to wind the gates and cleared the signal slots. After the train passed he wound the gates and rejoined us. The red flag was the signal that a train had struck in on the approach tracks which triggered an annunciator on the blockshelf.

At the boxes on another line there was a list of phone numbers next to the lineman's name on the contact card. They were the pubs he used to frequent when out on the district. 

[TheSignalEngineer]

Back to the topic, I offer you Cradley Heath & Cradley East box. 

 

Another variation was Coombe Junction which had the staircase centrally with the toilet entrance outside on the landing. I believe that was a Saxby and Farmer building.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3418197

 

[swiftbeam]

Well It seems I should have looked closer !!

The bit of railway I'd like to take inspiration from is the road crossing at the Gwili Railway, hence the Peco signal box. It's close enough to work with, and it had the box on the side all along !! ☺️

[Wheatley]

That one at Gwili looks like a straightforward porch, Cradley Heath more like a combined porch and toilet. If you zoom in there's an inner door visible. 

[Steamport Southport]

Originally from Llandybie (Llandebie) according to this.

 

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/421769/

 

Here it is before preservation.

 

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/b/bronwydd_arms/index17.shtml

 

 

Jason

[swiftbeam]

I live fairly close to Carmarthen and been on the Gwili a few times. I really like the road crossing there and how everything is all very close, crossing, siding, signal box, platform, shed etc. 

[Phil Bullock]

5 hours ago, TheSignalEngineer said:

Back to the topic, I offer you Cradley Heath & Cradley East box. 

 

Another variation was Coombe Junction which had the staircase centrally with the toilet entrance outside on the landing. I believe that was a Saxby and Farmer building.

https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/3418197

 

Very nice. Saxby and Farmer were signalling contractors to the OWW if I remember correctly but some of their boxes were replaced with GWR patterns eg Norton Junction. 
 

Phil

[Compound2632]

14 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

I think the goods shed might also be GCR.

 

The Metcalfe goods shed, along with the double-track engine shed (at least as originally produced) and the discontinued associated buildings - coal stage, sand house, and water tower - all had a strong Midland flavour, which is hardly surprising given the firm's location. Since they teamed up with Peco they've unfortunately gone all prettified Great Western...

[TheSignalEngineer]

4 hours ago, Phil Bullock said:

Very nice. Saxby and Farmer were signalling contractors to the OWW if I remember correctly but some of their boxes were replaced with GWR patterns eg Norton Junction. 
 

Phil

Saxby built a lot of the early boxes on the GW but the OWW and a lot of the northers boxes were McKenzie & Holland. 

Hartlebury Station was the early style of McK&H, built about 1875/76.  https://old.signalbox.org/gallery/w/hartleburystn.php.

 

Cradley Heath & Cradley East looks like the GW design based on the later McK&H style. The GW built the northern section boxes from about 1883 onwards. I don't know the date of that box but would guess late 1880s

 

The hipped roof with 3 over 2 windows style was designed c1896 and was built until the late 1920s

[The Stationmaster]

'Signalman in toilet' was a common explanation excuse for 'slow' response to block bell signals - particularly 'Call Attention'.   I occasionally saw it in Train Register Books but it was sometimes used as a way of craftily drawing attention to a Signalman at an adjacent 'box who was known to occupy his time on various less than official duties or who was disliked for whatever reason.

 

Some older people on here might remember a BBC TV comedy series called 'Davy Jones's Locker' from the mid 1950s where Davy, the Signalman at a small country station, got up to all sorts of tricks.   According to someone I knew when working in South Wales the author had based a lot of the stories on things from real life allegedly drawn from Blaengwynfi on the R&SB line at the end of the Rhondda Tunnel.  That was probably true as the station had quite a reputation at one time for what one might term 'less than official' goings on.  On one occasion when he visited, as an Inspector, to call on an old colleague (who was the Stationmaster) the entire station and signal box were deserted until he knocked on the door of the Stationmaster's office and went in to find said Stationmaster and the lady Booking Clerk closely engaged in a far from official activity on the Stationmaster's desk.

 

On a more common basis the signal box regularly doubled as barber's place of business (the Signalman's  other activity) and staff regularly wandered off to attend to traps laid in various places away from the station for the purpose of catching rabbits.   So hair cutting and the repair of watches were regular activities in quieter signal boxes.   Attendance at pubs during working hours was also a common feature at places well out of the normal round of official visits or where the bush telegraph, in its various forms, could be relied on to let people know officialdom was on the way.  And that extended to Stationmasters - for example the pub opposite Goring station had, in pride of place on the wall, a photo of a previous Stationmaster who had clearly been a valued customer.

[bécasse]

The masters for some of SE Finecast's* early white metal kits were fabricated in Feltham Junction signal box during the quieter periods of night shifts.

 

* Then run by Bob Wills.

[Compound2632]

42 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

'Signalman in toilet'

 

Plenty of ideas for interior detailing there - though beware of Rice's First Law of Motion. 

[Michael Hodgson]

3 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 

Some older people on here might remember a BBC TV comedy series called 'Davy Jones's Locker' from the mid 1950s where Davy, the Signalman at a small country station, got up to all sorts of tricks.   According to someone I knew when working in South Wales the author had based a lot of the stories on things from real life allegedly drawn from Blaengwynfi on the R&SB line at the end of the Rhondda Tunnel. 

 

 

 

I assumed this was lost forever as most live transmissions were not recorded.  Thank you for identifying the programme, as it seems a script was printed in 1956 although it's described as a one act play here. 

https://openlibrary.org/books/OL16508539M/Davy_Jones's_Locker

This book is unavailable however.

 

My father, who had no interest whatever in railways used to talk about a comedy series set in a Welsh signal box that he enjoyed on the wireless in the 1950s, though he couldn't remember the name of the programme.  It couldn't have been this TV programme as he didn't have a telly in 1955 when it was broadcast.  However it seems it was first transmitted on the Welsh Home Service in 1954 when we were living in Edinburgh, so he wouldn't have received that either, and again on the main Home Service a couple of months later.  Clearly sufficiently entertaining to have been promoted by the BBC from a stage play to regional radio then national and finally to TV.

 

So, apparently not based on Blaengwnfi, but on Pontiscill (on the B&M) and set in "Pentrefelin" signal box- presumably relocated to the latter which had already closed whilst the former was still open in order to protect the guilty.  Or maybe an abandoned signal box was just easier for broadcasting than one which was still operational.

 

 

[Hal Nail]

On 02/10/2022 at 22:59, TheSignalEngineer said:

Another variation was Coombe Junction which had the staircase centrally with the toilet entrance outside on the landing. I believe that was a Saxby and Farmer building.

Isn't that just an entrance porch?

Edited October 4, 2022 by Hal Nail