GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill Station: gwrbsh1670

View of Birmingham Snow Hill North Signal Box which was opened on 31st October 1909. There was limited space available at Birmingham Snow Hill and the new Birmingham North Signal Box was constructed on a narrow, but substantial six bay steel gantry and overhung the railway lines on both sides. To save more space the points and signals were operated by electric power. The power cable trunking enclassing the cables can be seen rising in the fourth bay.

A 5kV electricity power supply was obtained from the Birmingham City Corporation and this was transformed to 140V in a substation beneath the station. To provide additional security, two batteries of accumulator cells, which could be charged from separate motors and duplicate cabling, were provided for the signalling system. This was one of the first electric power signalling systems on the Great Western Railway and it proved to be reliable, until on 28th October 1940, all power was lost to the signalling system, when the battery room was destroyed by a bomb.

Robert Ferris

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