Scotland’s railway signal boxes still use Victorian technology

Victorian-era technology that would have been familiar to Charles Dickens is still in use across the Scottish rail network, it has emerged.

Metal lever systems, semaphore signals and bell codes — deployed on several single-track lines outside the central belt — remain so vital for spare parts that they cannot be donated to museums.

Signal boxes dating back 150 years will also be retained for the next two decades, according to Network Rail Scotland’s latest plans.

Lynsey Hunter, who runs signalling for Scotland’s railway, said the archaic technology was adequate for less popular routes and would only be replaced as part of wider upgrading.

However, she said that some junctions would always have mechanical signal boxes.

“To close a signal box is very expensive,” she told The Scotsman. “So to spend money efficiently, we only make major changes when we are doing other work such as extending passing loops on single-track lines or electrifying a route.”

She added that plans to centralise signalling in Edinburgh and Glasgow — which are run by highly modernised control centres — had been changed.

“The idea now is rather than go to two main hubs, to vastly reduce the number of signal boxes to about 10 to 12 over about the next 20 years.”

The mechanical signal boxes involve signallers pulling waist-high levers connected by wires to raise or lower rectangular metal signal arms.

A mechanical signal box is used in the heritage railway that runs between Leadhills and Wanlockhead in south Lanarkshire

ALAMY

The telephone had not been invented at the dawn of railway signalling so signallers instead communicate by tapping out a sequence of Morse-like codes that are acknowledged with a series of bells.

Gordon McCabe, one of four signallers working at Stanley Junction signal box between Perth and Dunkeld, said: “When people think about railway signalling, they think of people sitting at a desk. My family are amazed that I still pull big levers.”

There are still 47 mechanical signal boxes in Scotland, the largest being in Stirling, along with ten more modern centres.

McCabe said he only saw about 20 trains passing the signal box during a typical shift.

“There’s a lot of concentration involved,” he said. “There might be a period in the day you feel nothing’s happening, but things can change in an instant.”