Signalling infrastructure southern region 1960s

[ikcdab]

My layout is 1960s southern.

The main terminus has been upgraded to colour lights and point machines operated from a local signalbox.  So my assumption is that the semaphores were replaced sometime after WW2 with the colour lights.

I have installed (for better or worse) Peco dummy point machines which I believe are HW1000 types.

I have a signal gantry, platform starters and two gpls. 

My question is what sort of trackside wiring do I need? 

I guess I need to run concrete trunking from the signalbox to each point or signal.  Then thick wires from the trunking to the motor? Photos I have seen show multiple wires crossing the tracks near the paintwork.

Also, location cabinets? Is there one near each installation?

You can see that I don't really know what question to ask.  I guess, what trackside infrastructure (wires, troughing, cabinets) do I need to supply?

Would it help to post a track plan for clarity?

Ian

[ikcdab]

Here is a site plan.

I imagine concrete troughing out of the signalbox along the southern side of the track towards the gantry and tunnel mouth (there are signals the other end of the tunnel).

Then wiring from the troughing towards each point machine or signal. If so, would these be single wires or multiple cables?

A location cabinet near the gantry

At the tunnel mouth, the wiring emerges from the troughing and goes up onto racking inside the tunnel.

Images such as this appear to show multiple wires emerging from the troughing, maybe they go to other point machines in the vicinity.

 

[phil-b259]

1 hour ago, ikcdab said:

My layout is 1960s southern.

The main terminus has been upgraded to colour lights and point machines operated from a local signalbox.  So my assumption is that the semaphores were replaced sometime after WW2 with the colour lights.

I have installed (for better or worse) Peco dummy point machines which I believe are HW1000 types.

I have a signal gantry, platform starters and two gpls. 

My question is what sort of trackside wiring do I need? 

I guess I need to run concrete trunking from the signalbox to each point or signal.  Then thick wires from the trunking to the motor? Photos I have seen show multiple wires crossing the tracks near the paintwork.

Also, location cabinets? Is there one near each installation?

You can see that I don't really know what question to ask.  I guess, what trackside infrastructure (wires, troughing, cabinets) do I need to supply?

Would it help to post a track plan for clarity?

Ian

 

HW1000 point machines are a late 1970s / 1980s invention - but in the absence of the Westinghoues M3 (which is more in keeping with the 1960s) they will do - just pay attention to how you mount them far too many modellers get this completely wrong (the sticky out bits on the sides cover the rods coming out of the machine and align with the spaces between the sleepers!)

 

Concrete trunking does not run right up to each piece of equipment - think of it like a trunk of a tree, not individual branches. It is there to protect large quantities of cables and thus runs alongside the tracks linking location cases - individual cables to pieces of equipment (known as 'tail cables') would simply be laid on the surface and only enter a toughing route after running under the tracks.

 

Tail cables are thicker than line side multi cores and you may well have more than one feeding equipment. Points machines will typically have one cable carrying the operating circuits (those which get it to move) and another which carries the detection circuits (which report back the points status). Signals may well have separate cables for their main aspects, route indicator, etc.

 

Location cases are there to hold relays and terminate cables - you can fit a good number of relays and terminations in a single case so a single case could quite easily deal with two more 3 ends of points and a similar number of signals. Its positioning would probably be roughly in the middle of all the equipment it controlled so no one tail cable was excessively longer than the rest.

[phil-b259]

43 minutes ago, ikcdab said:

Here is a site plan.

I imagine concrete troughing out of the signalbox along the southern side of the track towards the gantry and tunnel mouth (there are signals the other end of the tunnel).

Then wiring from the troughing towards each point machine or signal. If so, would these be single wires or multiple cables?

A location cabinet near the gantry

At the tunnel mouth, the wiring emerges from the troughing and goes up onto racking inside the tunnel.

Images such as this appear to show multiple wires emerging from the troughing, maybe they go to other point machines in the vicinity.

 

 

You seem to be lacking GPLs from some of your sidings

 

In the 1960s the final signal on the approach to a platform was red / green not red / yellow, they also need route indicators.

 

You don't have any call on facility which will prevent the attaching of trains in the platforms.

 

Its unlikely that the approach line would be di-directionally signalled - the upper of the two signals on your gantry would in reality be a GPL for shut moves back into the station from the departure line.

[ikcdab]

7 minutes ago, phil-b259 said:

 

You seem to be lacking GPLs from some of your sidings

 

In the 1960s the final signal on the approach to a platform was red / green not red / yellow, they also need route indicators.

 

You don't have any call on facility which will prevent the attaching of trains in the platforms.

 

Its unlikely that the approach line would be di-directionally signalled - the upper of the two signals on your gantry would in reality be a GPL for shut moves back into the station from the departure line.

Ok. HW on the plan is hand worked so no GPLs needed there. I think I am just missing one on the exit from the top left goods headshunt.

I do actually have RIs on the gantry, just didn't show them on the plan.

I am sure you are right about the shunt signal on the gantry, but I like gantries and wanted to have one! 

I also have RIs on the platform starters.

[Nearholmer]

Where on the SR is this in the 1960s? I ask, because the installation might already be quite old, or it might be pretty much fresh out of the box.

[Michael Hodgson]

Platform staters do not need route indicators - they only read to the departure line. 

You would not use the arrival line for shunting. 

 

The gantry would not be appropriate so close to a tunnel mouth.  Sight lines would be much better to a normal post/GPL.

 

A gantry protecting entrance to the tunnel might conceivably be justified, or perhaps even for the platform starters depending on what else might obstruct their visibility from the cab.

 

Some of those points/signals are so close to the box that I suspect the tails might run direct to the relay room of the box.  But a loc might be needed if there was a shortage of space in the box for relays.

 

Not clear why you need two crossovers.  The one nearer the tunnel is needed to depart from the two left most tracks, the facing crossover permits entry to the other platform, but that woud probably only be used as a departure road, empty stock being shunted into it over the trailing crossover.  Or is intended to use bith crsooovers for running round purposes?

 

You don't have engine release facilities at the buffer stop end of platforms, are you using only multiple units, or intending to prvide a station pilot?

[ikcdab]

30 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Platform staters do not need route indicators - they only read to the departure line. 

You would not use the arrival line for shunting. 

 

The gantry would not be appropriate so close to a tunnel mouth.  Sight lines would be much better to a normal post/GPL.

 

A gantry protecting entrance to the tunnel might conceivably be justified, or perhaps even for the platform starters depending on what else might obstruct their visibility from the cab.

 

Some of those points/signals are so close to the box that I suspect the tails might run direct to the relay room of the box.  But a loc might be needed if there was a shortage of space in the box for relays.

 

Not clear why you need two crossovers.  The one nearer the tunnel is needed to depart from the two left most tracks, the facing crossover permits entry to the other platform, but that woud probably only be used as a departure road, empty stock being shunted into it over the trailing crossover.  Or is intended to use bith crsooovers for running round purposes?

 

You don't have engine release facilities at the buffer stop end of platforms, are you using only multiple units, or intending to prvide a station pilot?

Hi Michael thanks for the comments.  All valid points, but the railway is built and I'm not changing it now. It works well and we use shunt release for incoming trains. 

The layout is basically Minories with added sidings.  So the two crossovers are as designed by CJF.

My thread shows progress.

What I am doing now is adding the details such as the point wiring.

Ian

[Oldddudders]

32 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Where on the SR is this in the 1960s? I ask, because the installation might already be quite old, or it might be pretty much fresh out of the box.

Good question. By and large in the post-war era, serious S&T investment was inevitably applied to the most needy routes. So in the '50s, the Brighton Line got modernised, then there were several years of new schemes in Kent, to go with Kent Coast Electrification. Then Guildford in the '60s, together with schemes to contribute to Bournemouth Electrification. Mopping up of easy targets around Crystal Palace and Streatham/Tulse Hill took place in the late '60s, but the country termini were conspicuously not modernised in any great haste - Epsom Downs was early '70s - due to lack of savings in doing so.

 

Plenty of S&T resources were thrown into level crossing modernisation in the '60s, both controlled and AHB - but the latter had a severe knockback in the wake of Hixon.  

[Michael Hodgson]

19 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Plenty of S&T resources were thrown into level crossing modernisation in the '60s, both controlled and AHB - but the latter had a severe knockback in the wake of Hixon.  

 

Indeed.  A lot of technical changes were made to existing AHBs, and most of those scheduled to be converted to AHB were now so expensive they stayed as they were as there was no longer a cost justification.  Very few new AHBs for several years (and not just on the the Southern).

[ikcdab]

Hi guys I don't want this to run away with itself.

This is a model railway that, like most, is imaginary.  I have included features I like, not necessarily all fully plausible. So I have no runrounds because I enjoy the fun of engine release.  I have a gantry by my tunnel because I like signal gantries and tunnels.  I also have an engine shed with 10 engines sat in it doing nothing and a track gauge of 16.5mm....

But I want it to look right.  Plausible (that word again).

This is 1960s on the southern region. It's double track mainline probably West of Salisbury. But it could be East.....but definitely the LSWR main line to the west.

I have a double track branch to an urban terminus that was modernised. Above Tulse Hill was mentioned and, coincidentally, the signalbox is a model of Tulse Hill. So imagine Tulse Hill, 1960s, but transplanted to the west and modelled as an expanded Minories terminus.

Photo below shows the approach. I now want to add some signalling cables that look right.  

I like the concept of the concrete trunking being like a tree and individual wires out.  How many wires run to a point machines such as the one in the foreground? 

I now plan to have a location cabinets on the left, the trunking running towards it, then a cable going under the lines to the point machine.

 

 

[Nick C]

Is this any help? It's a modern picture, but of a heritage railway installation (I suspect the orange piping is a more modern feature though!)

 

There's two cables going to the point machine, I would presume one would be to the motor itself (the taller bit on the right), and the other to the detector (the bit with three rods on the left).

 

[phil-b259]

25 minutes ago, Nick C said:

Is this any help? It's a modern picture, but of a heritage railway installation (I suspect the orange piping is a more modern feature though!)

 

 

There's two cables going to the point machine, I would presume one would be to the motor itself (the taller bit on the right), and the other to the detector (the bit with three rods on the left).

 

 

Correct - though the termination point for all external cables is located at the left end of the machine (which has two cable entry points side by side on the left hand end)

[phil-b259]

On 01/04/2024 at 13:39, ikcdab said:

Ok. HW on the plan is hand worked so no GPLs needed there. I think I am just missing one on the exit from the top left goods headshunt.

 

 

You miss understand.... see the attachment.

 

Remember that you have to consider protecting moves entering the siding from what is already in there deciding to move and colliding with it....

 

In general any point equipped with a point machine will need protecting with signals from ALL directions....

[bécasse]

Here is a view of a 1959 Southern Region installation at Sheerness, it is a slight oddity as the point is a wide-to-gauge  trap (on a passenger line!) but doubtless Phil will tell us if there are obvious differences with the standard installation.

[Nick C]

That's interesting in it's own right, if only for the crank arrangements for the wide-to-gauge trap. I wonder how that would have worked with mechanical operation - being on a passenger line it'd need an FPL, but of course there's no tie-bar for the bolt to go through...