Monday 6 December 2010

Penshaw North Signal Box




The rather excessive snow around the North East having curtailed various other activities, has at least kept me fit with all the shovelling, and has enabled some progress to be made with the box. As an appeasement to the villagers of Penshaw and it's station (located between Fence Houses and Victoria viaduct), which have for space reasons been omitted from the layout, I have at least made a decent effort to model the overtrack signal box at the junction. The box spans four tracks here, and was kept busy even in the late 60's, according to one of the signalman, Neville Whaler.
Nev has sent me loads of photos of the box (one of himself at the controls is above), along with various shots of just some of the adjacent lattice signals. Lots of etching work to do now to get this lot incorporated on to the layout!
The box is not fully fitted yet, so still a few hours more work to do on all the bits and pieces, but nearly there.
Note the outside 'netty' (NE for toilet) and the little crane for hauling a bucket of coal up to the box. Apparently it was safer than going up and down the stairs!

Bob.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Very nice, Bob. Will you be bringing it along to the NEAG meeting so we can get a closer look ? Always thought that these NER overtrack boxes seem to put other company cabins to shame.
Neville looks a dapper young chap !

David Long