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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 13:57 #36697
kbarber
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Mortimer Street Junction on its last full day in service, October 1978. Note the cutting side location and the arrangement of cranks to take the point rodding down to track level.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 13:59 #36698
kbarber
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View from Mortimer Street towards Junction Road. A train from Barking approaches journey's end (which, in those days, was Kentish Town - the destination didn't become Gospel Oak until 1981).

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:03 #36699
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Interior of Mortimer Street, October 1978. This is electronically enhanced - the original was too dark to show any significant detail. Note the rotary block pegging instrument at the far end of the block shelf, all the rest (including its corresponding non-pegger) being standard instruments (that offered very little protection compared with the rotary). Note also the typically Midland arrangement of a brass strip on the front of the block shelf below the instruments; it doesn't really show that this was engraved with descriptions for bell and instruments.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:06 #36700
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Another electronically enhanced picture of the diagram at Mortimer Street, October 1978 (just before abolition). Even this little box used to control a significant number of sidings in its earlier days, hence the white levers in the middle of the frame in the previous picture. To the right, the upper pair of lines ran to Engine Shed Junction and Kentish Town, the lower pair was the north curve to Carlton Road Junction (the only part of the layout that still exists).

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Last edited: 20/10/2012 at 14:07 by kbarber
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:11 #36701
58050
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Keith the picture of the DMU on a Down stopping service must be a Cl.127 unit if it is on a St. Pancras - Bedford service. Looks very much like one. Nice photos of the box interiors, always wondered what they looked like from the inside.
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:12 #36702
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To finish the afternoon I wandered round to Carlton Road Junction, seen here basking in the late October sun. The up goods (up fast to be) has been relaid but is not yet in use, by the looks of the rust, while concrete troughing has been piled ready to lay in (presumably when the box is demolished).

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:14 #36703
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" said:
Keith the picture of the DMU on a Down stopping service must be a Cl.127 unit if it is on a St. Pancras - Bedford service. Looks very much like one. Nice photos of the box interiors, always wondered what they looked like from the inside.
does look like a 4 car 127. as keith said before, they both have a tail lamp bracket, and thats the main thing

"We don't stop camborne wednesdays"
Last edited: 20/10/2012 at 14:14 by jc92
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:14 #36704
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" said:
Keith the picture of the DMU on a Down stopping service must be a Cl.127 unit if it is on a St. Pancras - Bedford service. Looks very much like one. Nice photos of the box interiors, always wondered what they looked like from the inside.

Whoops... I'll edit. As I say, trains generally existed to carry a tail lamp through the section for the purpose of block working; I never did take a lot of notice of what type they were!

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:17 #36706
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56032 at Crewe on 260896 working 6V72 1615 COY Hardendale Quarry - Margam TC.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:21 #36707
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Hellfire picture of the Cl.127 unit. Without a shadow of a doubt the best 1st generation DMUs ever. Rols-Royce powered 238hp each, so that's a total of 952hp per 4 car set. I've actually driven a few of them. I've seen some of the remaining power cars at The Midland Railways Centre down the road from where I live. They look in a sorry state, compared to the set at Loughborough on the Great Central which looks superb. :woohoo: Much better than Cl.319s.
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:24 #36708
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47807 at Saltley LIP on 051096.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:26 #36709
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Carlton Road from the country end, with a down train passing. The line to Mortimer Street, Junction Road and Barking curves away through the tunnel and the slow lines that joined up with the south curve at Engine Shed pass behind the box. The gantry in the tunnel mouth carries a rather peculiar, though not unique signal (I suspect it was derived from LMS practice). There was a 2-aspect unit in the centre, capable of showing yellow or green; either side of the yellow was a red. When the signal was cleared, one of the reds would go out, so that the one that remained indicated the route the train was not taking. In this case red to the left of either yellow or green would mean the train was routed over the right-hand route, i.e. the down fast. (As, by this time, the connections to the down goods had been removed it was all a bit academic but still...) This signal, which I think was the last one of its type in the London area, was abolished along with Carlton Road box itself the day after this photo was taken.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:29 #36710
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Super picture of Carlton Road box. Got to say that was my favorite box on the Bed-Pan line. You could throw a stone from Carlton Road box & it would probably hit Engne Shed Junction signal box they were that close. Only the bridge that carried the North London Line separated the 2 IIRC.
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:31 #36711
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Bottom end of the frame at Carlton Road, with the country end of the diagram prominent. Engine Shed box is marked on the diagram, above the uppermost pair of lines heading to Kentish Town station (extreme right) but the junction with the south curve is not shown. There is no sign of temporary blanking out, so it looks as if this is a new overlay produced when the connections to the goods lines were abolished - a lot of unneccessary work, I'd have said, given the short life it must've had before abolition.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:42 #36712
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Top end of the frame at Carlton Road. Look at all those white levers!

" said:
Super picture of Carlton Road box. Got to say that was my favorite box on the Bed-Pan line. You could throw a stone from Carlton Road box & it would probably hit Engne Shed Junction signal box they were that close. Only the bridge that carried the North London Line separated the 2 IIRC.

Got it in one; that white object visible through the bridge looks like Les Duffield's garage, with the Engine Shed lamp hut being the rust-coloured object beyond and the box steps hidden by the bridge arch. Swift gives the distance as 247 yards and the 1969 SA as 224.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:43 #36713
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Keith do you remember the Ripple Lane - Nottingham freightliner train which ran in the 1970s & crew changed on the Up & Down Hendon Lines at Cricklewood Recess? I'm assuming the train was worked by a Cl.47 as Cricklewood men didn't sign Cl.37s as far as I know & that train was routed via Carlton Road Junction. Also do you recall the oil train that used to run to Dunstable?
Last edited: 20/10/2012 at 14:43 by 58050
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:47 #36714
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That frame looks alot bigger than I thought. How big was the frame in Carlton Road, because the area in which the box sits is very tight, so what did all those levers control? I know Tartan Arrow had a terminal at Kentish Town as there was a fast freight to Carlisle in the 1960s worked by pairs of Metropolitain Vickers Cl.28s 'The Condor' which I believe was on the opposite side of the mainlines to Kentish Town round house. Are you able to clarify?
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:49 #36715
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An up train (fast or Cricklewood cars, I really don't remember which) passes Carlton Road. The points on the right are where the Barking and Moorgate (Engine Shed) lines split. Just beside the engine in the down fast is all that remains of the former connections to the down goods there was no access between the fasts and the goods lines here, just this fiendish arrangement of diamonds, with single slips providing the connections to the slow & branch lines (and there was also a single slip in the up goods to create a trailing goods line crossover). No wonder the Civil Engineer wanted to simplfy things!

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 14:53 #36716
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Much prefer this view to the one you would see today from the same spot.
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:00 #36717
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" said:
Keith do you remember the Ripple Lane - Nottingham freightliner train which ran in the 1970s & crew changed on the Up & Down Hendon Lines at Cricklewood Recess? I'm assuming the train was worked by a Cl.47 as Cricklewood men didn't sign Cl.37s as far as I know & that train was routed via Carlton Road Junction. Also do you recall the oil train that used to run to Dunstable?

I don't recall the Dunstable but I did see the Notts Freightliner through Finchley Road a number of times. In fact it featured in the only time I ever knew a misread bell signal down that line...

Midland block bells could be rung fast. VERY fast... in fact so fast that when I first started visiting I struggled to count even how many beats there were. But it wasn't long before I could confidently distinguish between 2-2-1-5 and 2-3-5 and 3-2-5. Until the evening, as the peak died down, that Carlton Road rattled something in that neither I nor the signalman could make head or tail of. "Cricklewood cars," he said after a moment of head scratching, so I accepted it and pulled off down the local. A few minutes later a 47 emerged from the tunnel with the freightliner, running well early. Cue consternation (and a fair bit of bad language) and the signalman threw back the starter, 3-5d it (cancelled the train on the block instrument) to Cricklewood and got on the phone to tell him what was going on, before we re-offered and pulled off again.

No harm done in the end (with the shortage of staff down there, both boxes were working without a train recorder so the books were closed). But it would've been interesting to say the least if the Notts had ended up in the car sheds...

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:06 #36718
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Hope the Ripple Lane driver didn't pass the signal at Danger when you threw back in front of him. Bet his heart skipped a beat at that one. Don't suppose he was traveling that fast. Indeed bell codes, I was getting a bit confused when my mate was on in Wrawby Box as the bells would be going off all time. Mind you he knew by the sound the bell made which one it was. Familiarity breeds content as they say. :P
I bet the driver had a few chosen words as well seeing that.

Last edited: 20/10/2012 at 15:07 by 58050
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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:30 #36719
kbarber
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" said:
That frame looks alot bigger than I thought. How big was the frame in Carlton Road, because the area in which the box sits is very tight, so what did all those levers control? I know Tartan Arrow had a terminal at Kentish Town as there was a fast freight to Carlisle in the 1960s worked by pairs of Metropolitain Vickers Cl.28s 'The Condor' which I believe was on the opposite side of the mainlines to Kentish Town round house. Are you able to clarify?

I have a diagram that shows a 90 lever frame, with 13 spare in 1969. It was said that there were enough spares to take over Engine Shed (and perhaps Mortimer Street as well, although that was never specifically mentioned); certainly 13 would've been enough if Islip Street had remained in service. (With Islip Street gone, Engine Shed controlled a number of signals on the Moorgat lines London side of Kentish Town and Carlton Road would've needed more than 13 levers to take over from both the other boxes.)

Carlton Road also controlled the layout formerly worked by Cattle Docks Junction (which had been somewhere opposite Engine Shed) and controlled connections with the goods lines and the (former) cattle docks opposite the loco sheds. So far as I can tell from the SA instructions this became the Tartan Arrow terminal in due course, but I suspect there must have been some modifications to the layout I have as the instructions don't make sense with the diagram I've got.

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:34 #36720
kbarber
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" said:
Hope the Ripple Lane driver didn't pass the signal at Danger when you threw back in front of him. Bet his heart skipped a beat at that one. Don't suppose he was traveling that fast. Indeed bell codes, I was getting a bit confused when my mate was on in Wrawby Box as the bells would be going off all time. Mind you he knew by the sound the bell made which one it was. Familiarity breeds content as they say. :P
I bet the driver had a few chosen words as well seeing that.

Fortunately he wasn't moving that quickly. I suspect we might've got the starter off again before he actually came in sight of it - by this time Finchley Rd had been reframed and the down starters were country end of West Hampstead platforms; he wasn't travelling very fast and the signalman moved extremely quickly!

Yes, you do get to know bells by sound - and where to reach for the tapper and for every lever, in the end you can virtually do the job wthout ever needing to look at the frame (and sometimes even without looking at the diagram too).

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:41 #36721
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This one's out of sequence; looking back at Engine Shed from Mortimer Street. The signal is Engine Shed's home, little more than 150 yards from Mortimer St box and about the same from the junction points at Engine Shed. The buildings on the left are part of the old Kentish Town loco sheds (the roundhouse - in fact there were 3 roundhouses here, side by side).

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Photo Gallery 20/10/2012 at 15:44 #36722
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Final shot I took that day, with a 127 passing Engine Shed on the down fast and all the detritus of a big engineering job lying around. The signal is the home from Mortimer Street, with a distant beneath it for the colour light signal at the London end of Kentish Town platform.

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