Victorian Signal Box Constable Burton

Victorian Signal Box under construction at Wensleydale Railway

Transcript

00:00 My name is David Harrison. I work for Winston Dale Railway and we're in the

00:05 Dales, we're at Constable Burton, the old station at Constable Burton.

00:09 Well the building behind us is a Grade 2 listed building. It was taken down at

00:15 Hertford East Station near London. It was totally taken in pieces and it was

00:22 brought up to Yorkshire on five 40-foot Arctic trailers. We put it in store for

00:27 a year while all the planning went through to bring the signal box here and

00:33 the unfortunate thing is that people didn't realise how rotten it was. So I

00:39 had a terrific amount of pieces to repair, completely renew and thankfully

00:46 my friend let me do it in the big barn because some of these pieces are over

00:50 8.5 metres long by 200 by 200 either large or Douglas Fir. The building

00:58 originally I think was built in Douglas Fir and I think it was built in 1860 or

01:04 around that time. It was in a big marshalling yard down at Hertford East

01:12 but they wanted to extend the platform at Hertford East so this had to be taken

01:18 down. They couldn't demolish it because it's a Grade 2 listed building and

01:23 looked around and we said we would accept it and so that's how come it came

01:29 up here. This I think was a 27 lever frame signal box but on the track here

01:37 we only have two sets of points so two will be working but all the lever frame

01:43 will go back as it was originally. The points just behind us will be worked on

01:50 rods the traditional way but the points further down, oh sorry up the track will

01:58 be electrified because it's too far for rods to work they wouldn't be able to

02:03 pull the levers. The idea is to open it up to the public on certain days so that

02:11 they can see the lever frames being used but that is yet to be decided by the

02:17 the trustees. I love a challenge I've been in the trade now 60 years. I was a

02:24 carpenter and joiner and I did a six-year apprenticeship. Three years I

02:30 had to make everything by hand and then in 1972 I started my own business as

02:37 joinery and since then I've built small shopping centres, nearly every

02:46 single thing you can think of, handmade. I've really enjoyed it and this

02:53 was a challenge. I enjoy a challenge and this was mentally exhausting as well as

03:02 physically exhausting to work it all out where every piece went to but we've got

03:08 it we've got the main structure up now and now we're cladding the building. The

03:14 only other point that is sticking me at the moment is the lever frame housing

03:20 because I have no diagram of how it went so once we start doing the lever frames

03:26 then we can put those timbers in position to support all the lever frames

03:30 of metal work.

03:31 [BLANK_AUDIO]