New Signalling Scheme for the Swanage Railway

News Release dated 25th April 1999 - all photographs are copyright Andrew P.M.Wright.

History is being made with Swanage Railway volunteers starting work on a £40,000 two year Swanage station resignalling scheme - the largest project of its type on the line taking the Purbeck Line up to a new level of intensive operation but in the style of the 1920s and 1930s.

SWANAGE Railway volunteers have started work on an historic £40,000 two year 1930s-style resignalling scheme - the largest project of its type in the 114 year of the line that when completed will take the award-winning Purbeck Line up to a new level of intensive operation. The centrepiece of the inter-war style signalling scheme will be a new large 40-lever Southern Railway type signalbox, the 1920s Westinghouse frame used in a signalbox at Brockenhurst station in Hampshire.

The scheme may look a quaint throwback to the inter-war years with Southern Railway-style semaphore signals, but it incorporates electrical and mechanical modern safety systems.

Set into the embankment opposite where the old BR signal box used to be until 1967, re-inforcing rods for the signal box base have been installed with a start having been made on the blockwork for the base which will be externally faced with Purbeck stone.

When completed, the scheme will replace a primitive system of uncovered groundframes which have served the railway well for the first 20 years of operation since its rebirth.

With Swanage station's track points controlled and protected by the new signalbox, the new signalling scheme will enable trains to arrive and depart at the main and bay platforms. Currently, trains can only use the main platform with the engine running round its carriages before departing.

But when Swanage's two platforms are in use thanks to the new signalling scheme, a train will be able to arrive in the main platform with, a minute or two later, another passenger train being able to leave Swanage from its bay platform.

The new signalling scheme will also enable more complicated shunting movements to be carried out at Swanage station - and more quickly. "The old ground frames have served the restored railway well for its first 20 years but the number and frequency of trains we now run - more than in BR days - means we need to turn around trains much quicker than before," said Swanage Railway's volunteer signalling chief Stuart Ward.

"It's an exciting project and one that's very important. It will also complete our efforts to make Swanage station look as it did from the 1920s through to the end of steam in 1966," added Stuart who works as an electronics engineer for Siemens in Poole.

Swanage station lost its 1885 LSWR 23-lever signal box and quaint-looking semaphore signals in June, 1967, after BR replaced steam traction with Hampshire-class diesel electrical multiple units with just one train running the service along the branch line to Corfe Castle and Wareham.

"The new signal box we're planning for Swanage will be to the same design as Swanage's Victorian one but a third larger. It will have a Purbeck stone base, steps and verandah, wooden cabin, large windows facing the track and a slate roof," explained Stuart.

As well as the resignalling scheme, Swanage station will be seeing other changes - the track point from the headshunt to the main line being reinstated by the engine shed, as in BR days, so passenger trains can arrive at and depart from the bay platform at Swanage.

The ex-Barry Island water tower on the Corfe Castle end of Swanage platform, located there since 1978, is set to be taken down and replaced with an old style water column between the main line and engine shed road by the Swanage turntable.

The 40-lever Westinghouse lever frame set for the new Swanage signalbox used to be in the Brockenhurst 'B' signal box. When that box was taken out of use, the lever frame was saved by Ralph Montagu, son of Lord Montagu, founder of the famous National Motor Museum at Beaulieu.