East Coast Main Line Upgrade
The Doncaster installation was the third major signal box to be commissioned on the East Coast Main Line, the previous two being King's Cross, completed in 1977 and Peterborough in 1973. Prior to the scheme's authorisation in 1974, train movement was controlled by a mixture of outdated semaphore and colour light signals operated from 52 signal boxes mainly containing mechanical lever frames, many dating from the 19th century.
Power signalling, however, was installed in two signal boxes, one at the north and the other at the south of Doncaster Station. The work was planned and some equipment was on site before World War II but the installation was not commissioned until 1949. Searchlight colour light signals and electric point machines were controlled from switch panels. The interlocking equipment was unique being a sequence switch interlocking system manufactured by Standard Telephone Company using telephone switching techniques to the technical specification of the signal engineer of the then Southern Area of the London and North Eastern Railway. The sequence switches consisted of a rotary contact shaft which was rotated to a route position and proved a circuit through contact wipers. Each switch had a "home" position and eleven route positions. When a route was initiated, a clutch was engaged on the appropriate switch to rotate it into its correct position thus setting up the appropriate interlocking circuits through other switches and relays. The installations proved to be remarkably reliable, serving a very useful purpose but were eventually life expired.
In association with the resignalling scheme, was a major programme of track improvements to enable trains to run at speeds of up to 125 mph. This was achieved by simplification and rationalisation of the track layout and realignment of curves at many places.
An early improvement was the adaptation of an existing railway bridge south of Doncaster to become a flyover enabling trains to and from the Lincoln line to cross over the main line without conflicting with the mainline trains.
The largest alteration to the track layout was in the Doncaster area where the work was staged over an extensive period.
Read more about this topic: Doncaster PSB
Famous quotes containing the words east, coast, main and/or line:
“The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-in house, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.”
—Phyllis McGinley (1905–1978)
“The Boston papers had never told me that there were seals in the harbor. I had always associated these with the Esquimaux and other outlandish people. Yet from the parlor windows all along the coast you may see families of them sporting on the flats. They were as strange to me as the merman would be. Ladies who never walk in the woods, sail over the sea. To go to sea! Why, it is to have the experience of Noah,—to realize the deluge. Every vessel is an ark.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Dust rises from the main road and old Délira is stooping in front of her hut. She doesn’t look up, she softly shakes her head, her headkerchief all askew, letting out a strand of grey hair powdered, it appears, with the same dust pouring through her fingers like a rosary of misery. She repeats, “we will all die”, and she calls on the good Lord.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“As for conforming outwardly, and living your own life inwardly, I do not think much of that. Let not your right hand know what your left hand does in that line of business. It will prove a failure.... It is a greater strain than any soul can long endure. When you get God to pulling one way, and the devil the other, each having his feet well braced,—to say nothing of the conscience sawing transversely,—almost any timber will give way.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)