Banbury South

21/5/06

This is the view towards Banbury South from the road overbridge north of the station, and shows the up goods lines that run alongside the station.

A closer view of the layout and signals at Banbury South, taken from the down platform and looking towards Aynho Jct.

The up goods lines and trackwork.

This is the view from the end of the up platform.

A close-up of the fibre-optic banner repeater mounted below the start of the platform awning on the up main platform.

A closer view towards Aynho including the rear of the colour-light down home.

A closer shot of the up bay home (BS3), taken from the down platform. Note the blue Cab Secure Radio identification plate - see Greenford for another example.
A lower-quadrant ground disc and an upper-quadrant one can be seen in the background.

On the down side, there are also some sidings with this connection into the relief line halfway along the platform.

This ground frame controls the connection to the siding furthest from the down platform.

A closer shot of the ground frame levers.

There is also a connection to the sidings by the signalbox.

A closer shot of the up goods home (BS19). Again, two different types of ground disc can also be seen.

12/11/10

These two new lower-quadrant semaphores have now been installed to enable passenger trains to reverse towards London from the down main and relief platforms. Though the primary motivation for this upgrade was to allow First Great Western trains to reverse here during the Reading blockades, it will also be useful for Chiltern trains. These signals replace the three discs whose faces were visible in the photo but one above.

It can be seen that their design differs from traditional GWR/WR signals in a number of respects:

they have no finials,
the balance levers are mounted across the front of the posts rather than at the side,
no counterweights have been fitted (no doubt because the wire runs from the signalbox are not long),
the down-rods have those unusual kinks in them, and
they are electrically lit, as is almost ubiquitous nowadays.

The points on the right have been converted to use clamp-lock motors - this avoided the need to add a mechanical facing point lock and detector, and hence to run the wires to BS33 and the disc beside it through the latter.

This is how the London end now looks from the station footbridge.

30/12/10

When the time came for the FGW diversions around the Reading blockade, the missing finials had materialised. Strange, though, that their white paintwork doesn't match the metallic grey of the signal posts.

Video clips

30/12/10

A short clip showing the signals in operation with the FGW diversions during the Reading blockade.