The 31st of March 2023 turned out to be a very interesting day.

The initial minor disappointment of George, The Stourbridge Junction station cat, being unaccessible for some fuss (he was perched on a filing cabinet at the back of the ticket office having a wash) was quickly tempered by this turning up!

This wasn’t what I was out for mind you.  The main event was a tour of New Street’s signal box which you may know has recently been decommissioned.  Network Rail ran a ballot for people to have a look round and having been unsuccessful with that my visit was saved by my friend Tom who had a spare ticket.

I wasn’t expecting to find a lever frame but there is one.  Its located on the third floor which is used for training.

The fourth floor is a gigantic relay room. It still had that lovely electrical machines smell.

These are called K packs and each one controls 1 thing outside in the station.  Theres no plug in a laptop and diagnose a problem with these things.  If something goes wrong an engineer would need to use their knowledge of which pack is causing the problem, lift it out and use and the paper schematics that are kept on the same floor to fix it.  All under the pressure of something on the station being shut down and the general (organised) chaos that would ensue. We were told that some of these pack have never been touched since the day they were installed.  About 60 years of reliable service!

The view from the fifth (top) floor window.  The Building directly ahead is about the only thing thats unchanged since my version of New Street set in the late 80’s.  The blue building stands where the original lamp block stood and is still called that.

Finally the panel.  Who knows how many millions of movements were controlled by this in its lifetime?  All the platforms are bi-directional and all worked via permissive block working.  Everything being safety netted by the relay room downstairs.  We were told it would take a signaller 6 months to become proficient in using the panel although there was one guy who learnt it in 8 weeks.

It genuinely is mind blowing!  Thanks to the Network Rail Staff who looked after us all.