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GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Small Heath and Sparkbrook Station: gwrsh3154

Small Heath North Signal Box viewed from beside the up main line under Golden Hillock Road bridge on 18th July 1963

Small Heath North Signal Box viewed from beside the up main line under Golden Hillock Road bridge on 18th July 1963. This Signal Box was opened on 24th July 1910 (see 'Signal Alteration Notice No 393'). The signal box was originally a Great Western Railway type 27c design of timber construction with a hipped slate tile roof. Approximately 200 of this 27c signal box type were constructed between 1905 and 1921. There were four torpedo vents on the roof ridge and a single stove pipe. The signal box was forty-nine feet, eight inches long by twelve feet wide and the operating floor was eleven feet above rail level. An internal staircase was provided. The operating floor windows were the three up - two down pane arrangement that is typically associated with the Great Western Railway and these surrounded the operating floor on all sides except for a short section on the side facing the relief lines where the stove was located. The Signal Box contained a three bar GW horizontal tappet frame with 92 levers at 4 inch centres.

The BSA ordnance factory at Small Heath and the adjacent railway infrastructure was specifically targeted by the German Luftwaffe during World War 2, resulting in disruption from repeated bomb damage at Tyseley, Small Heath and Bordesley during the air raids in 1940/41. To provide some protection against blast the ground floor lock room was rebuilt with substantial red brick walls and without any windows. Concrete lintels were provided over the entrance door and switch rodding openings, but the original upper operating floor was retained.

Robert Ferris

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