Westinghouse miniature power lever frame - North Kent East Junction signal box

North Kent East Junction signal box with its Westinghouse Brake & Signal Co. Ltd. Style 'L' Power Lever Frame was a 'first' in power signalling terms. It was the very first UK installation of an all electric locking lever frame, the design of the 'L' frame which is subject to Patent No. 330637 this was initiated by two Westinghouse executives, the General Manager Captain BH {Bernard Harvey} Peter, and his brother Major LH Peter who was Chief Mechanical Engineer. The mechanical design was by WA Pearce, who was responsible for designing the pre-cursor mechanically locked 'K' style levers frames as fitted to London Bridge, Cannon Street & Borough Market Junction.

North Kent East Junction signal box was located at the point of divergence of the Greenwich and Lewisham lines and is east of Corbetts Lane Junction where the Croydon Line turns south. This signal box was brought into use on Sunday 1st December 1929 and continued in continuous use for 46 years until its operation was take over the London Bridge Signalling scheme on 15th April 1976. The box was always double manned by two signalmen.

North Kent East signal box exterior view taken around the late 1960's.

North Kent East exterior view, it was situated just to the south of the Surrey Canal, the point at which the Greenwich and New Cross (Lewisham lines) lines part company. Picture copyright © J Scrace, reproduced by kind permission of Middleton Press, from their Charing Cross to Orpington book in the southern mainlines series published in 1991 ISBN 0906520967. Graham Floyd a contributor to this web site visited North Kent just once on a dark winters night, the walk way to the box was up a spiral staircase on the side of the viaduct and along a catwalk with slippery wooden boards to walk on and only two horizontal rails to stop you falling through, the catwalk was about 25 yards long before you reached a second spiral staircase (seen on the outside shot) which took you up the outside of the structure to the working floor and I don't like heights at all! He had his camera with him but for some reason lost the film! .

The lever frame is a Westinghouse Style 'L' Power Frame and was the first all electrically locked frame of its type in the UK, The frame was formed of 7 x 12 way section which making a total of 83 levers, {7x12}-1 = 83 levers, as the last “lever” space is unavailable. 24 of these levers worked 50 point ends, 51 signal levers operated 54 coloured light signals, and there was one 'Release' lever and 7 spare levers when the frame was supplied and installed. This made the working lever total of 76.

North Kent East signal box around 1930, with its Westinghouse Brake and Signal Co. Ltd miniature power lever frame and track diagram

I think the picture above is shortly after the lever frames was installed in or around 1929. Picture from the Railway Engineer, reproduced by kind permission of Middleton Press, from their London Bridge to Addiscome book in the London suburban railways series published in 1993 ISBN 1873793200. At this early date, the colors in the outdoor signals, from the bottom up, were originally Y, R, YY, G. (See the diagram; black dots are the red aspects.) Thus presumably so were the roundels. The present standard sequence of R, Y, G, YY came a little later.

Behind the miniature levers are the point and signal repeaters and above them are the Walkers rotary train describers for each route. The sending units are on top of the frame the receiving units are located each side of the track diagram.

North Kent East signal box around 1960, with its Westinghouse Brake and Signal Co. Ltd miniature power lever frame

Above is a more detailed view of the lever frame obviously taken in later years, when as the more modern electric light style train describers have replaced the majority of the walkers rotary train describers above the levers. The illuminated 'N' and 'R' indicate the points as either being Normal or Reverse, the 4 glass roundels showed the signal aspect, being Red, Yellow, Green & 2nd Yellow reading from bottom to top. The train describers are fitted on top of the frame box, with the Sykes Block instrument and its bell plungers followed by the Walkers Rotary Train describer to {probably} Bricklayers Arms Junction. Emergency bell plungers are provided next to adjacent signal boxes, followed by yet more train describers. It may also be worth noting that the Sykes instrument is not a "lock and Block" instrument but an "electric closed block" instrument. They looked very similar but in place of the Sykes key there was co-operative releases.

Over the years extensive alteration took place at North Kent East Junction, and in 1965 the Southern Region of British Railways found that the alternation required could not be accommodated without extensive disruption to to traffic patterns which were not acceptable at such a location close to London Bridge.

Rear castings and contacts had been fitted to levers 71 through 83 and these had originally come from the ex Euston Station lever frame [closed 27/9/65] The solution adopted was to fit the complete frame with Rear contacts and to install all new wiring onto these contacts to simplify the change over process. Hence the then Eastern Divisional Signal Engineer PRG Guyatt arranged with Mr Brentnall of the LMR for the necessary spare parts from the redundant Euston frame.

The modification caused the frame to acquire a conventional i.e. later style case work which is evident in the second interior photo but I would think that this case work came as part of the Euston package (same as Balham)

Track layout, reproduced by kind permission of Middleton Press, from their London Bridge to Addiscome book in the London suburban railways series published in 1993 ISBN 1873793200

Diagrams
Attached is

Southern Railway signal instruction 43 notice and

signal instruction 43 track diagram) this can be downloaded in PDF format, this covers the opening of North Kent East Junction signal box and it related signalling between Spa Road & New Cross. These diagram(s) are taken from the web site of the Signalling Record Society Research Note37. These images are copyright of the Signalling Record Society, and reproduced by permission.

Please be aware that these files are large and can take a while to download depending on your internet providers line speed. typically file sizes between 300-500K each

You will need a PDF viewer to read PDF file, if you don't have it its free to download

Adjacent boxes
London Bridge to Dover Marine (via Tonbridge) line
When opened London Bridge and St. Johns were the adjacent boxes.

Bricklayers Arms to North Kent East Junction line
When opened Rotherhithe Road was the adjacent box. Rotherhithe Road box was closed in 07/1965 and North Kent West Junction became the adjacent box (line to Bricklayers Arms which is just off the diagram to the left)

North Kent East Junction to Maidstone West (via Greenwich) line
When opened Greenwich was the adjacent box {closed 4th Feb 1934}, by 1960 Maze Hill was the adjacent box. Maze Hill box was closed on 29th November 1969. The next adjacent box was then Charlton Junction which was closed on 15th March 1970 along with Sand Street Crossing, and Woolwich Arsenal boxes. At this time a temporary panel in St Johns controlled Charlton, this was later transferred to the London Bridge PSB. By 1973 the Greenwich line was controlled from St. Johns box, that is definite and I assume that when Maze Hill box closed North Kent East Junction worked to Charlton Junction until 15/03/1970 when St. Johns box became the adjacent box (although on a different line)

East London line
When opened Canal Junction was the adjacent box

Old Kent Road Junction (on the East London Line) is at the bottom of the diagram above.

You can go straight to the signal box listed above, by clicking on the signal box name, provided the signal box name is highlighted

Boxes Replaced
The North Kent East Junction power signalling scheme displaced 6 mechanical signal boxes and this was typical of the power installation of the times.

Mechanical Signal box displaced		Power signal box	It can be seen that there is a decrease in lever numbers by around 75%, which amounted to a considerable saving in manpower, operational and hardware costs.
Spa Road	52 Levers
Blue Anchor	22 Levers
Southwark Park	44 Levers
Surrey Canal	72 Levers
North Kent East Jct	70 Levers	76 working levers
New Cross	79 Levers
Total	339 Levers	76 Levers

The serial number of this frame was L37, as frames 1 to 36 had been constructed to the 'K' type. As a complication the next frame number L38 was a 'K' frame so all subsequent 'L' frame numbers started at L39.