Ravenstone Wood Junction Signal Box-an anomaly

[Dave Hayward]

Closely examining the brass lever plates shown in the Olney Line entry in the Index Section of this website I noticed a significant anomaly. Some of the above plates, specifically 1, 10, 11, 12, 25, 32, 34. refer to platforms, loading dock, goods siding - my question is where were these features? Piddington, Salcey Forest and Olney stations all had their own signal boxes/ ground frames and were not, as far as I know, linked to Ravenstone Wood. There was a proposal when the SMJ was originally built that there should have been a station at Ravenstone Wood but it was not seen as a viable option and never built. I do wonder if these levers were installed in the belief that they would have been required for the proposed station and would have always been 'spare'. 

Does any member of this group have access to or knowledge of any details of the contract to construct the Olney Branch? If so do these provide any details of a proposed station at Ravenstone Wood Junction.? Was it to be just sited on SMJ lines, on the Midland Line or both. To become an interchange station, two simple platforms on the Midland, south of the Junction, would have sufficed.

Additionally it does seem that they were not the only 'spare' levers as numbers 13 and 14 were utilised from 1942 until 1944 to signal the temporary 'southern' entrance to the War Department Storage Depot at Yardley Chase. {Midland Railway Society Journal}.

I am currently making enquiries with other 'railway fora' to endeavour to solve this mystery. I will keep this group aware of any positive outcomes.

Dave

[Barry Taylor]

Hi Dave

The answer is that the lever plates shown in the Index section are not from Ravenstone Wood Junction signalbox - I strongly suspect that they are from Olney although I don't have a signalling plan to hand to confirm this. RWJ box was a 20 lever frame and so there are far too many lever plates in the Index photo.

Below is an extract from an Olney station plan which does at least show lever 12 as being a disc and so corresponds with the lever plate picture.

Somewhere I have copies of plans which shows the proposed triangular junction layout at RWJunc before running powers over the Midland to Olney were negotiated instead (they are actually reproduced on pages 108-110 of Volume 1 of my SMJ book). Yes - there was to have been facilities at the junction including a station but  it became too expensive and they went for using an enhanced layout at Olney instead. Hope that this explains it all - Barry

[Barry Taylor]

Further to my last post - I should have been a bit clearer and also have said that the numbers on the lever plates are too high to have been from Ravenstone, as there were only a max of 20 possible in that signalbox frame - Olney seems the likely candidate.

I've also discovered the plan that shows the proposed layout at Ravenstone that was never constructed - in fact it is from a file at Kew (MT6/479/5 of 1889) that deals with the abandonment of powers for various bits and pieces of the line at Towcester (connections with the Northampton & Banbury Junction Ry), Stoke Bruerne (branch down to the Grand Union canal) and Ravenstone -