GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Queens Head Yard: gwrqhy1965

One of three views of the interior of the operating floor at Queens Head Signal Box showing part of the three bar, vertical tappet frame and the instrument shelf above. The frame had fifty-three levers at four inch centres and these were colour coded and arranged in a logical order. Each had a brass plate identifying the lever number and what it operated. By the time this photograph was taken some rationalisation of the trackwork had occurred resulting in a number of switches (points) and signals being removed and the corresponding levers had also been removed from the frame.

The low number levers at this end of the Signal box controlled the outer and inner Distant Signals and the Stop Signal for the two Up lines (Main and Relief). These are the two groups of three levers at the very end with those controlling the Main line coming first. The next central group of levers controlled the switches and signals associated with the southern end of Queens Head yard and the shunting spur adjacent to the up main line. Originally six levers (numbered eighteen through to twenty-three) operated two route indicators signals. These informed the locomotive drivers exiting the yard and up goods loop which route had been set, but one group of three levers has been removed from the frame. Next came the switch levers associated with the southern end of Queens Head yard, while closest to the photographer are the levers controlling the switches and signals associated with the northern end of Soho & Winson Green Goods Yard and its connection to the Down relief line.

On the shelf above the frame are a variety of instruments including; standard Great Western Railway block telegraph instruments, bells, train describers (with their large pegging dials at the bottom), signal repeaters (used where signals were out of sight of the Signal Box), etc. Above the instrument shelf would have been a large plan of the track controlled from this Signal Box.

Robert Ferris

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