jim s-w wrote:Nope, abandoned passenger line. The signal would be a repeater and the other one would be the other side of the bridge. I ran the plan past a signaller so don't worry
Not worried, Jim, just interested in railway history and its effects on operation. Clearly, however, I didn't look back far enough in the thread before my last posting, for which apologies.
My rationale, for what it is worth, is that in the past, with the passenger line in operation, the sidings would have had to have been fitted with trap points to protect the passenger line, and the signals permitting exit from the sidings would both have been 'stop' signals since movement to the headshunt or the main line would both foul the passenger line. Given what appears to have been normal LMS practice, presumably either double ground signals or double vertically mounted subsidiary arms on a normal tubular post would have been used. A yellow ground signal would have no place in this scheme, and would have to be an alteration after closure of the passenger line.
By the 1960s the common carrier obligation had gone, the railways were no longer obliged to publish rates, and were free to price traffic as they wished. Less than wagonload traffic was distributed by road from a few major centres. In consequence many such small yards were seeing less and less use as traffic declined because of the poor economic position of heavy industry particularly, and other businesses going under or switching to road. Many such yards closed during the 1960s; whilst they remained open only essential changes were made, for obvious economic reasons.
The alterations to the double slip seem entirely reasonable to me in this context, I was just trying to suggest that the catchpoints would still have been there as well, just clipped closed, not removed, on the same logic as you applied to the double slip. The two stop signals at the yard exit would not then need to be altered, just a local instruction issued to change their effect for engineman plus some relatively minor changes to the box frame locking. Alternatively, if S & T had been on site to change the exit signalling [unlikely I submit], I would expect them to have salvaged the passenger line stop arm, if not the whole signal.
On one thing I would question your phrasing - stop signals were just that. They were not used as repeaters. A repeater would probably have been necessary, given the sighting problems presented by the bridge and the curve, but would have been an illuminated banner on the other side of the bridge, and I assume that this is what you meant.
I have been following this topic with interest, and, as with others who have commented, am impressed by the scenic effects you have achieved; will you be letting us have more details on techniques, or have you dealt with this somewhere else that I have missed?
Noel
