GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Tyseley Station: gwrt2995

A low resolution version of the Signalling Diagram for Tyseley North Signal Box showing the Main and Relief lines, a double facing crossover junction and the trailing connections to the Goods Yard from the Down lines. This Signalling diagram has been reproduced courtesy of the Signalling Record Society (S.R.S.). Details of how to purchase their full resolution content is available here.

When the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway was originally built in 1852 there was no station at Tyseley, but records indicate that a signal box called ‘Tyseley Signal Box’ was opened in October 1903. This was twenty-one feet long by twelve feet wide of timber construction and housed 19 levers. It does not however appear in the Service Time Table (STT) list of Signal Boxes for Summer 1904, so may have been of a temporary nature associated with construction work (Previously in the spring of 1888 a temporary signal box had been erected to control the single line running associated with the strengthening of the bridge over the nearby Grand Union Canal).

In 1906 when the main line was quadrupled between Tyseley and Olton, a new Tyseley North Signal Box was opened to control the start of the recently completed quadrupled section. An order (No 252) for a cast iron nameplate for 'Tyseley North Signal Box’ was placed on 20th March 1906. The Signal Box was built to the standard Great Western Railway GW 27 design. As built the ground floor locking room was timber framed with a horizontal weather board cladding. The locking room was twenty-nine feet long by twelve feet wide and the upper operating floor was eleven feet above rail level. The operating floor had the typical Great Western Railways three up – two down pane arrangement in horizontal sliding sash windows. The slated hipped roof had 'rocket' ventilators on the ridge and was pieced by a stove pipe. Tyseley North Signal Box housed a GW three bar horizontal tappet frame with 39 levers at 5¼ inch centres. This diagram indicates that nine levers were spares.

Tyseley North Signal Box controlled block sections on the Main and Relief lines, but not the Avoiding (Goods) lines. It also controlled the two 20mph facing junctions between the Up Relief to Main line and Down Main to Relief line, plus access and egress to the northern end of Tyseley Goods Yard which had trailing switch connections to the Down Main and Relief Lines and trailing crossovers to the Up lines. To operate the block sections, the Signalman sent messages to the preceding Signal Box to give permission for trains to enter the block section on their line and used signals to indicate to train drivers when they were allowed to proceed. Distant Signals, distinguished by their forked tails and yellow colour (post September 1927) gave train drivers advance warning of the status of the next ‘Stop’ Signal. The Signalman could set a route with the point switch levers and these being interlocked with the signals, indicated to the train drivers which route was set and when they could and could not proceed safely and had to stop. Tyseley North Signal Box was located with a good view of the track layout it controlled, so track circuit indication was never provided.

By 1959 the trailing connection from the Down Relief line to the Goods yard had been removed, while the trailing connection from the Down Main line to the Goods yard was taken out of use in July 1964. Tyseley North Signal Box became unmanned from 9th January 1966 and after a DMU derailed damaging the double junction on 22nd May 1967, these connections were also removed. Tyseley North Signal Box was permanently closed on 7th July 1968.

Robert Ferris

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