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GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Moor Street Station: gwrms1731

Winter 1968, looking south from the island platform along the viaduct towards Bordesley

Winter 1968, looking south from the island platform along the viaduct towards Bordesley. This Great Western Railway type 27C signal box stood between the main lines and the tracks into Moor Street terminus station. It had a 118 lever at 4 inch centres in a three bar horizontal tappet frame. This particular signal box was the second signal box at Moor Street. It opened on 7th September 1913, replacing a slightly smaller type 27C signal box, with a 61 lever, three bar horizontal tappet frame, which had been opened on 27th June 1909, but was found to have insufficient lever capacity once the goods yard area was extended. This original signal box was re-erected at Foxhall Junction, Didcot, where with a 45 lever frame recovered from Hackney, it opened on 27th November 1915. Sixteen years later this signal box was moved again to Abercynon.

The new signal box at Moor Street had a narrow brick base 54 feet long by 12 feet wide, an internal staircase and six windows on each side providing natural light to the ground floor locking room (the date that these windows were bricked up is not known). The operating floor was 13 feet, 6 inches above rail level and was unusual in that it over-hung the brick base. The operating room walls were clad with horizontal wooden boards and it had a tiled hipped roof with five torpedo vents on the ridge and two stove pipe flues. Standard Great Western railway three-up two-down windows were provided all the way round (excepting where the two stoves were positioned) The frame was converted to a five bar vertical tappet frame on 14th December 1943 and the signal box was finally closed on 1st September 1969, eighteen months after the Snow Hill route had closed.

Robert Ferris

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