On a British signaling forum I frequent, a signaler known as Ian Ives uploaded a number of VHS video tours he made of some London area British Power Signal Boxes (also called Panel Signal Box or PSB) back in the 1990's. For those of you who don't know, a PSB is roughly equivalent to the type of interlocking tower that was largely passed over in North America in the evolution from single interlocking towers to dispatch offices. They are basically what the NYC Subway calls Master Towers.
Popular in the UK between the 1960's and the 1980's, they replaced most of the electro-mechanical interlocking towers in busy urban areas as well as scores of pure mechanical towers. PBS's contained large NX style model boards with light green tiles. Their most high tech feature was automatic train description using small LED or CRT display boxes, which in the 1960's was quite a feat indeed. While well documented pictorially, there are relatively few video records of how these panels were worked so check out these great resources.
If you like these, make sure you visit and/or subscribe to Ian's channel here. If you would like an official tutorial on how these panels worked, you can find it here.
No comments:
Post a Comment