A4 colour film from the 30s

[Bryan]

Found this elsewhere
Apparently its an NRM film on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yH59RyYa ... r_embedded

[Ferrybridge Flyer]

Was that a streamlined coach at the back of the last shot??

[52D]

FF if you note on the film you will see one of the Beavertail observation cars also showing was the underframe fairing on the streamlined coach sets and i too noticed a whitish fairing around the coridoor connection of the last coach. No doubt Bill Bedford or Coachman will enlighten us further.

[M Gair]

The last shot was of the Silver Jubilee set, which had a corridor connection on the last coach with a name plate over the connection. It read "The Silver Jubilee" The loco was a Blue A4 which makes it possibly post 1937 when the 4 Silver A4's were painted Blue. Some good footage too. Shame its so fast.

Mark

[Hermit 109]

Shots appear to have been taken at Ganwick between Hadley North and Potters Bar tunnels

[StevieG]

I absolutely concur on the location of the clips, Hermit

[manna]

G'Day Gents
I loved that, and a few others,I only managed to 'cop' one loco 4900, heading north, pity we did,nt get a shot of Ganwick box
manna

[StevieG]

Manna,
If you watch the 'beavertailed' down train in the first clip heading towards Potters Bar Tunnel, and briefly in the last shot, there is a down line colour-light signal (which changes aspect to red as the first train passes : Should be sig. D11). Also, I cannot pick up on there being any mechanical signal wires running along either cess.
So it looks to me like it was already too late for Ganwick box, as, along with Hadley Wood and Mimms, I think it had already gone, supplanted by full track-circuiting and colour-light signalling between Greenwood and Potters Bar in the early '30s.
http://www.signallingnotices.org.uk/ has only one entry for this stretch - a Notice dated 17th Dec. 1931, which is when I presume Ganwick would have been abolished.

[manna]

G'day Gents

Doh!! silly me, never thought to look at the signals, always one of my favourite spots, the line side hut by the box it think survived for a few years?

Just thinking out loud! you see a lot of pics around 'Ganwick' up until the 40's after that date a lot of pics at 'Hadley Wood' 1950's and 60's etc, but very few pic's at 'Hadley Wood' in the 20's and 30's I think I've only seen one pic of 'Hadley Wood' in the 1930's-- a North bound A4, charging through the station but you could see the crossover and 'Goods shed behind the down platform, Any more out there,

Did'nt know there was a signalbox at Hadley Wood, and as for 'Mimms' ???? where was that???

manna

PS Nice shot of 'Humorist' with a large lump of it's smokebox door cut away, and in the background 'Ganwick Box'

[Flamingo]

Here's a good scenic view of Ganwick curve. It was one of my favourite spots too. Before the line was widened to 4 tracks I never went there unfortunately. I don't know who took this shot of an A4 heading north as an A1 comes the other way on an up Pullman , but I wish I had been there to hear that wonderful change in the pitch of the A4's chime whistle as it dived into Potters Bar tunnel. That is one of the sounds that sticks in the memory, like those of the wartime 'Moaning Minnie' air raid warning sirens and in happier times the rhythm of a V2 coming past Greenwood on the evening York Goods.

Ganwick curve

[StevieG]

Mimms box was somewhere not far outside the north end of Potters Bar Tunnel.

Most tunnels (except possibly, very short ones) became acknowledged in the early days as dangerous places where trains might be 'lost', overlooked, (miscounted?), or early telegraph equipment misunderstood, by the early signalmen [see the 'Clayton Tunnel accident of 1861 on the LB&SCR line, as an example that mention of tunnel safety often makes me think of : http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/listin ... &submit=Go].
And so, track circuiting, having not been around initially, then later, until it eventually really got accepted as reliable (took quite a few years) and was installed in many useful places (probably seen as expensive to go for in great numbers), it first became quite common for signal boxes to be provided at, or not far from, each end of many tunnels so that trains could be positively signalled in and protected, and positively identified as having come out of the other end, complete (tail lamp), at the reasonably earliest time. Hence the one-time boxes such as Highbury Crescent and Drayton Park (at the South and North ends of Canonbury Tunnel respectively), which had little or no other purpose (these co-existed with the longer-lasting and better known, nearby Canonbury Junction and Finsbury Park No.1 boxes), and numerous others around the country, many of which lasted longer than one might've thought once potential replacement signalling methods were identified.

Both Mimms and Hadley Wood, in their time, were in any case useful as 'break-section' boxes, creating additional Absolute Block sections between Greenwood, Ganwick, and Potters Bar, thus allowing trains following preceding ones to start seeing cleared signals sooner than if they didn't exist, something probably even more important on the Down line's up-gradient to Potters Bar, than on the Up (while Highbury Crescent and Drayton Park were so near their larger neighbours to be of questionable value in this sense).

Actually I think that Mimms, and Hadley Wood, had already been abolished as Block Posts before the colour-lights brought the end of Ganwick.

Flamingo's photo is a very atmoshperic one (thanks very much for that); a scene I knew very well, living only about two miles away until 1975. Ganwick box stood on the right hand side (as in the photo) of the then (& now) Up Slow (formerly the Up Main prior to quadrupling), just beyond of the trees and slightly further from the line than most boxes (about 12 feet perhaps), on the top of the very low embankment there.
A depression in the ground of the box's site could still be discerned if you know where to look, for very many years, and I think only disappeared when spent track formation spoil was dumped along the bank, maybe 10-12 years ago, and was soon grown over by vegetation.

[manna]

G'day Gents

Thanks for that Stevie G, they say you learn something every day, New Box 'Highbury Crescent' plus the two other New boxes, Mimms and Hadley Wood, and I'm only up to Wednesday!

Thanks, manna

[Flamingo]

If you count Mimms, Ganwick, Hadley Wood and Greenwood that makes 4 boxes in about a mile and a half of line. Seems a rather excessive provision. Were they all in use at the same time?

[StevieG]

Manna,
You may really know the Drayton Park box I referred to, but, just in case, it was between 'Drayton Park' (the road) and Canonbury Tunnel mouth.
It wasn't the slightly better known mechanical signal box to the north, lower down at the N. end of the Great Northern & City railway's Drayton Park station platform, later LT's, and now, these last 34 years (! Wow!; so long already!), on the Finsbury Park - Moorgate 'Northern City Line' section of 'national rail', served by First Capital Connect's 313 units.

[manna]

G'Day Gents
Stevie G
I know we've wandered a bit, from Ganwick & Hadley Wood! but are you saying there was another box ! on the GN side of Cannonbury Tunnel and before Finsbury Pk No1??????? ( where the American signalman worked)

Flamingo

I know it's a bit over the top, with 4 boxes in a mile and a half, but it would give them very short sections which would help keep the trains moving, the first time I travelled up to Liverpool St in the cab of a EMU I was amazed at how close the signals were, and on one rush hour trip back to Southend, we could actually see the train in front, changing the signals from green to red, we were running at 75mph on two yellows all the way from Stratford to Shenfield, bit different from the running on the GN mainline (71/72) where it was still semaphore signalling.
manna