Hopefully most of you are familiar with the excellent job the crew at HARRIS tower has done reactivating its US&S Model 14 interlocking machine with the help of a lot of PLC's and Train Dispatcher 3. Well over in the UK a project is afoot to do the same thing to the old NX panel from the Swindon Power Signal Box. The "PSB's" were a generation of British area signaling control centers that replaced the most hard pressed mechanical tower in the 1960's and 70's. They used a lot of relay logic to implement push button N-X operation and many eventually came to feature integrated train description. A tour of Swindon PSB can be seen below.
Swindon, like many other PSB's, are being removed from service because many of the telecon grade relays that drive the user interface and other ancillary logic are becoming nearly impossible to maintain. Here below is a video showing the "domino" style panel board being re-assembled after it arrived at its preservation site.
Here is a brief demo of the old panel UI hooked up to some modern electronics. And yes that is indeed the Danny Scroggins who is so well known for his comprehensive documentation of vintage British signaling and signalboxes.
Of course there is an entire Youtube Channel devoted to the project, with videos like this one showing the progress of the custom PLC components.
In fact the panel has its own preservation society and as of now they are projecting an grand opening date of June, 2018, plenty of time to score that cheap transatlantic airfare.
Couldnt find any way to contact you. You may want to check into the FEC... they are double tracking the south end of the line for Brightline, and some of the best maintained searchlights in the country are about to fall. Many have already have... If you need pictures, I can go get some for you
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