KSE Signalling Project

Working alongside mechanical signalling is the dark art of electrical trickery. One vital part of this  is the railway safety relay. Relays of one sort or another have been used in vital railway signalling  circuits for over 125 years now and through long experience with older relays the present design,  the BR930 miniature has become possible. I say a present design, it was the mid 1960’s when  they first appeared and are still manufactured and used in 2025 worldwide. Not bad eh? They might call them miniature, but they still weigh over a Kilo each.   There’s now well over 200 variants of this relay depending on what function they are required to  perform. Thankfully we won’t need that many variants! Westinghouse M3 Point Machine We have been collecting, gathering, squandering, basically hoarding all the types of BR930  miniature relay, also known as Q type, that we will need including spares.   Everything from track circuits, signal i...

  ...you're sure of a big surprise! The previously prepared girders (which will support the frame) were moved into position, so as to triple check the vertical dimensions. These sit on top of the block pillars that Bob and his team built into the box in the very early days of its construction! With a little chipping away, dropped mortar was cleared off the top of the plinths, and the two girders lifted into position. These support the frame in the box, with the lever quadrants sitting just above floor level upstairs. Hopefully! The drive from the frame drops down onto the floor of the locking room, which is secured to the lengths of rail that were set into the structure at the very outset of the project. Thus, everything is (eventually) tied together to prevent movement between different components, which would lead to all sorts of problems! The frame will be bolted to the girders, which in turn will be fastened down to the pillars. One of the next posts will cover the fastening of...

The blog has been quiet for a while, but that doesn’t mean nothing is happening—far from it. The work being done has simply been out of sight or not particularly noteworthy. For the past two weeks, we’ve been digging deep holes for the support posts of the access platform leading into the signal box. The steep bank, where the signal box is set, consists of loose, friable soil, meaning we’ve had to dig deep until reaching firm ground for the foundations. We’ve also been burying the trunking that will carry the electric cables, which will power the vast array of signalling apparatus yet to be installed. Meanwhile, ‘Delboy’ has been tucked away in the depths of the locking room, making final wall repairs before applying a scratch coat of waterproof plaster. So, there you have it—lots of work with not much to show just yet. However, we’ve now assembled all the components of the access platform, and the steps are currently being made. They’ll be appearing soon! We have an incredible team on...

Why, yes! Thermal expansion of point rodding! After many months as a pair of bench legs and a bit of a hollow in the ground, the steel bench top (a repurposed former soleplate) was bolted down to the legs and the 2 compensators in turn, bolted to it. The compensators change the motion of the rodding from being a 'push' to a 'pull' along the length of the run. This, as has been mentioned before, is to achieve the same amount of 'push' as 'pull' in the overall length of the rodding. So, if the temperature increases, causing the rodding to expand in length, the compensator takes up this expansion, but it does not affect the position of the point blades. (We will try to produce a video to show this in the future). As you have seen from previous posts on this very blog, a lot of components for the rodding runs have previously been cleaned up and painted. The value of this work cannot be underestimated when it comes to installation! We simply grabbed items ...