Midland Lever frames

Bob Ellis

Midland Lever frames

Postby Bob Ellis » Sat Oct 12, 2013 10:00 am

I am in the process of building some of the Society's lever frames to represent the frames in Hawes East signal box (12 levers) and Hawes West box (8 levers). I have built the lever frames very much as the instructions indicate with the exception that I have used 16 BA nuts and bolts on the catch handles rather than the 0.7mm soldered wire recommended in the instructions. I think the bolts will prove more reliable and they make it less likely that everything will be locked solid by errant solder.

I have reached the point where I want to paint the levers in prototypical Midland Railway colours and have found the following information about lever colours on p.55 of Midland Style by George Dow: "The lever colours were: distant signals, olive green; stop signals and ground signals and discs, red; points, Oxford blue; ground frame controls, yellow; level crossing and wicket gates, brown; and spares, white." But there is no mention of facing point lock levers. Can anyone tell me what colour they were painted?

One lever in Hawes East box controlled "Disc Signals & Crossover between Platform Line and Sidings." Would this lever have been painted red for the disc signals, Oxford blue for the points, or red over blue (or the reverse)?

Bob Ellis

Re: Midland Lever frames

Postby Bob Ellis » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:46 am

Thanks to Dave Harris of the Midland Railway Study Centre and his friend Tony Overton, I have a partial answer to these questions. A lever that operated a crossover and disc signals was painted blue and red, but it is not clear whether blue over red or vice versa. I suspect blue over red. It also seems likely that levers operating FPLs and EFPLs were painted black....unless anyone knows different!

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Tim V
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Re: Midland Lever frames

Postby Tim V » Tue Nov 12, 2013 5:01 pm

Have you tried asking on the Forum?
http://www.signalbox.org/
Tim V
(Not all railways in Somerset went to Dorset)

Terry Bendall
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Re: Midland Lever frames

Postby Terry Bendall » Wed Nov 13, 2013 7:29 am

Bob Ellis wrote:I think the bolts will prove more reliable and they make it less likely that everything will be locked solid by errant solder.


They may well do Bob. I have built two lever frames for use on the Society stand, so they are used a lot. No problems with the 0.7mm wire in terms of reliability so far. When soldering this sort of thing I coat the bits that I don't want to solder with grease and that seems to work.

Interesting that the Midland used different colours for their levers to other companies.

Terry Bendall


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