Cabinet Reshuffle

On Saturday, we carried out a cabinet reshuffle in the yard. Previously, we had recovered a number of location cupboards to house signalling equipment. These had been stacked on top of the concrete sleepers, out of the way, awaiting attention! Saturday was to be that day...

Before: the snoozing politicians await the
cabinet reshuffling in the car park.

In preparation, Sue arranged for WPS to lift down the location cupboards (locs), and place them in the car park. A team set to, to strip out all the old wiring, recover reusable components, and leave a blank canvas upon which we could work.

Work underway!

For the current scheme, we require 5 cupboards, and these were identified during the course of the day, and marked up accordingly. We then had to sort out the correct doors for the locs, as we'd removed them to make shifting the cupboards easier... had we marked them up first, it would have saved a bit of time!!

Inside a loc.: this is what required stripping out.

We separated out the locs we needed, and stood the rest up, ratchet strapped together for stability, ready for moving into storage until they are required.

The reshuffled cupboards that are required for phase 1
(5 locs - 2 near the station and 3 near the box)

So, why do we need location cupboards at all? Especially as we're doing so much mechanically?  Well, a lack of space near the station precludes simple mechanical control of the points between the Tebay and Bay platforms, along with their associated trap points. So point motors are required here (further details in a future post), which also enable a far simpler means of dual control between the two signal boxes later on in the project as a whole. These require relays to operate and control from the signal boxes, as well as track circuits for two reasons.

Firstly, to ensure points cannot be moved with trains sat on them; and secondly to enable the signallers to know where the trains are (or aren't), as not all of the track can be seen from the signal box, owing to the shed. You then need to have an indication as to which position the points are in...

Cabinets by nightfall (it was a long day!)


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