SVR S&T Dept.
Bridgnorth Down Home Signal on 8th February 2008.
SIGNALLING NOTES - Chris. Hall
I have been given so much stick from my colleagues about the lack of signalling notes over the last two years that I have now put pen to paper to try to cover the rather dramatic events that have washed over the S&T Department in the last year! It started in a small way on 17th June 2007 when we were working on Bridgnorth's Down Home Signal which had been giving some trouble - a minor job - and we noticed that a small slip had occurred in the ground at the south end of Oldbury viaduct. A crack about an eighth of an inch wide and a few feet long had opened up alongside the cable troughing. This was a taste of things to come and the later events were to make the term 'tension cracks', along with its symptoms, much more familiar - at that time however, it was (to us) an unknown phenomenon.
After working Bewdley North on 19th June I noticed that the rain on my journey home to Bristol had been heavier than normal and when the dust had settled the next day, we realised that the Bridgnorth Down Home Signal had been left perched high and dry as the surrounding ballast had been washed away. Something major had happened at Highley where a lot of our equipment simply fell into a new hole, including the Up Starting Signal. The damage that we gradually uncovered was to take us the next nine months to get to a stage where trains could resume running - once the engineering contractors had provided some ground into which we could place our equipment.
At Bridgnorth the Down Home Signal had to be removed to allow repairs and the cable from there to the Down Distant was severed and damaged by the work to repair the embankment where it passed behind the industrial estate at Knowlesands. This alone would be a major task for the Department - replacing the signal, signal post telephone, reinstaing the location cupboard, laying troughing to the berth track location and removing and replacing an underground signalling cable from there to the Down Distant, some thousand yards or so. We also took the opportunity to refurbish and repaint the Down Distant. We were heartened by the fact that the signalling circuits between Highley and Bridgnorth had remained functional (until contractors started work to dig out and repair the various slips).
Moving south past Crossing Cottage and Eardington,we did a bit of general location maintenance and tidying up, checking the documentation for the affected telephone and signalling circuits. Although the traditional Sterns slip had, in fact, been completely unaffected by the storms, just north of there the formation had started moving and looked as if it might continue moving, along with Sterns Cottage, until it had been swallowed by the river. To stabilise the embankment, concrete piles and a capping beam were to be installed and we had to remove and renew about 550 yards of underground signalling cable. A new location cupboard was made and installed a few hundred yards south of the Sterns slip and an existing location was to be used just north of the affected section. Once the track had been replaced, an underground cable was installed for a few hundred yards each side of the cottage, a job which started suspiciously easily until we encountered the hard packed ground near the capping beam but finished easily again in rather saturated ground from which we recovered a previous joint where the cable joints had been totally immersed.
Contractors were to be brought in between Waterworks Crossing and the road bridge at Hampton Loade station and so we carefully tied back the Up Distant signal wire to the fence, out of their way (or so we thought) but they managed to drive over and smash several signal wire pulleys and a signal wire wheel and to damage the signal wire. We did not expect the underground signalling cable to survive (and it did not). Once the contractors had completed their work, we renewed the signal wire pulleys and stakes that had not survived, replaced the damaged lengths of signal wire and installed a new signal wire wheel adjacent to the Distant Signal. The contractors had laid troughing from the Distant to the Home and once the track was reinstated, we used a road railer and wagon to pay out into the troughing the three signalling cables that were required. This work between Bridgnorth and Hampton Loade consumed about 4000 yards of signalling cable (1200 yards at Knowlesands, 550 yards at Sterns and three cables about 650 yards long between Hampton Loade and Waterworks).
Renewing the extension piece on the South end points at Hampton Loade in passing (much easier wih no trains running), we then turned our attention to Highley. We first dug out and recovered some rather strangely shaped signalling equipment, removed the fittings from the Up Starter (which was now several tens of feet below the railway, having slid gracefully down as the formation was washed away). The signalling cable from the box to the location cupboard at the Down Home had been washed down the bank, pulling out from the cupboard with very little damage and so we simply rolled it up until we had some ground into which to bury it again. We spent some time refurbishing the fittings for the signal and the repainted Up Starting Signal post was replanted in February. The fittings have since been restored, the signalling cable reconnected to the location cupboard and the signal itself is fully fitted out. However it will be a long job to reconnect the point rodding and detection for the south end points and only then can the signal wire run (to the Up Starter, the Down Home and the elevated disc) be reinstated. The elevated disc was removed along with the water crane and cattle dock but these will probably all have been reinstated by now.
Between Fishermans Crossing and Highley Down Distant, troughing had been laid by the contractors once their work was complete and an engineering train on 18th March was used to drop the cable into the troughing and to replace the lids. Some lightening damage was evident on an adjacent section of cable between the Distant and the Home and that is something we will have to attend to before long.
Sweeping up the leaves as we passed though Arley (the flooding had piled up debris against any obstruction and we had to clear this from the point rodding), we came to Victoria Bridge where the Arley Down Distant was looking rather precarious - in fact it was clear of the actual damage but was in the way of the contractors' access and was lifted out of the way and the signalling cable over the bridge disconnected. The signalling cable has been patched up and temporarily reconnected until cable can be laid in the troughing from there to the south end of the Station. Another job for 'tomorrow'.
From the south end of Victoria Bridge we have had to remove and replace some more underground cable and we therefore set off north from Northwood Crossing with a thousand metre drum of cable. Initially this was in troughing from the Crossing to the strike in track circuit and then was buried. At the Northwood slip we gave up burying the cable where the membrane had been laid close to the surface, leaving this for the contractors to install troughing. Another thousand metre drum was buried from Victoria Bridge southwards, initially in rather rockier ground but the going got easier further on. The cable ran out at Trimpley about five hundred yards short of the length from Northwood, the bit in between including Folly Point where there had been a significant slip (it made sense to have a separate cable just through here).The fill-in piece was also buried (proving to be one of the easiest pieces of cable laying we can remember, in nice soft ground) leaving us with another two new location cupboards and six terminations to do.
After this last piece of work, the moleplough was finally dusted off and put away until the next time as all the remaining cable would be laid in troughing.
As you can imagine, this level of damage to the S&T infrastructure was rather daunting and has kept us busy this year. It was therefore quite a pleasant surprise to find that the Bewdley South Inner Homes bracket signal had won the Westinghouse signalling award in the Railway Heritage section (the work to reinstate this signal was described in the previous article). There has been so much mention in this article of signalling cable - you may not have realised that an underground armoured signalling cable extends for the whole length of the railway, apart from a short length at Bridgnorth where the original pole route remains in use. This cable carries the token circuits as well as local circuits for such things as signal lamps and signal post telephones. It also carries the omnibus telephone circuit and a few selected automatic extensions and lineside emergency telephones. Replacement of this cable has therefore been the single item that has taken up most of our time over the last nine months. The main telephone circuits between Stations are now provided externally and as such calls are, in many cases, a charge to the railway. The service between Bridgnorth and Hampton Loade was reinstated on 9 February 2008 with the full signalling infrastructure between Highley (exclusive) and Bridgnorth restored to normal use by close of play on 8th February. The possession between Highley and Bewdley North was handed back with al token systems working at 1830 on Wednesday 18th March.
A final reminder that this article and the photographs associated with it, as well as other S&T information, can be viewed in full colour on the unofficial S&T (signals) web site at http://www.svrsig.org/ (or look for 'svrsig' on google). An annotated map of the work between Sterns and Bridgnorth shows the renewed Bridgnorth Down Home signal and some signalling cable being replaced between Oldbury Viaduct and Sterns. The area between Highley and Hampton Loade is shown with some photographs of the damage at Highley and the area between Northwood and Highley is shown with some photographs of underground cable being replaced.