European Railroad Discussion > Semaphores around Shrewsbury

The historic town of Shrewsbury in the English West Midlands is a railway junction of five lines and is controlled from four mechanical signal boxes, including what is now the world's largest - Severn Bridge Junction. These pictures were taken last weekend - May Day Weekend - which, befitting a British public holiday, was characterised by damp and sometimes arather chilly weather :-)

The first picture shows a pair of Arriva Trains Wales class 158s on a Birmingham International to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli service passing Abbey Foregate box with the looming presence of Severn Bridge Junction behind. In pre-BR days Shrewsbury was managed jointly by the London & North Western and Great Western Railways, and the boxes reflect that. Abbey Foregate is a GW design whilst Severn Bridge Junction is unmistakeably LNWR.

Winding its way out of the station, which is on the right, is the same train in the opposite direction - the 07:30 from Aberystwyth/06:46 from Barmouth. Note the mix of upper and lower quadrant signals, another manifestation of the joint nature of the station.

Six miles south of Shrewsbury, on what was known as the Shrewsbury & Hereford which, like Shrewsbury station, was managed jointly by the GWR & LNWR is Dorrington box, this is a morning empty steel train from Dee Marsh in NE Wales to Margam in SW Wales.

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The Shrewsbury & Hereford approach to Shrewsbury is controlled by Sutton Bridge Junction box, like Abbey Foregate a GW design. The 6M60 china clay tanks from Exeter Riverside to Bescot (Birmingham) via Newport approaches Sutton Bridge Junction. It's due to sit in the loop for 40 minutes whilst it is passed by a couple of passenger trains. Sutton Bridge also controls the junction with the Cambrian LIne to Aberystwyth, which curves away just out of sight to my right.

Just after 3 p.m. the 6M60 rounds Abbey Foregate curve and joins the Shrewsbury to Birmingham line for the last leg of its journey to Bescot Yard. It remained resolutely damp throughout.

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Great photos - As an ex-pat living in Canada for 34 years I love to see photos from back home, add a few semaphore signals and lots of British Rail memories, keep them coming.
PJ

Woinderful images as always, Nick. The kind of place I would enjoy spending time. I have always favored busy junctions of any kind, and to have one with semphores like that in profusion to boot, well, count me in. Maybe some day. I'm overdue for another trip to the UK.

Your title really caught my eye. My hometown of St. Louis, Missouri (home of the famed Gateway Arch) has a suburb of Shrewsbury, located just outside the city limits on the city's southwest side. It is named, of course, for Shrewsbury in England. In its very northeast corner, hard by the city limits with the City of St. Louis, sits a well known junction on the former St. Louis-San Francisco Railway (Frisco Lines), today a part of Burlington Northern Santa Fe. Southeastern Junction, or SE Junction, is at the west throat of Lindenwood Yard, the former Frisco's and today BNSF's principal yard in St. Louis. It is a mid-size flat switching yard, with a busy intermodal terminal. At SE Jct. the line south along the Mississippi River to Memphis, Tennessee diverges from the line to Springfield, Missouri and on to Tulsa, Oklahoma. Not nearly as busy as your junction, but an important one for the Frisco in the past, and for BNSF today.

Our good Trainorders friend Don Wirth (Frisco1522) recently posted some wonderful steam-era images of Southeastern Junction that depict the long-demolished tower (signal box to all of you on the other side of the pond), all with sempahores. If the tower and these semaphores in Don's images were not within the city limits of Shrewsbury, they can't have been more than 50 feet outside the limit and within the limits of the City of St. Louis. Certainly close enough for me. In fact, looking at historical maps I think the boundary passed right through the tower. The tower and semaphores are long gone, but SE Jct. has plenty of BNSF freight traffic today. And the recent MetroLink light rail line swoops overhead and across Interstate 44 to add something new to the scene.

When I saw your title and screen name, I thought immediately of these images and wondered, "What in  the world...?" Well, a small world it is, indeed.
Here's a link to Don's marvelous images:
http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3689786,3689786#msg-3689786

And here's a URL for Google for a map. The city boundaries should highlight in pink if you click on the city name. The junction is in the triangle in the very northeast corner.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Shrewsbury,+MO/@38.586552,-90.3276495,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x87d8ca34264c150d:0x701952a006a27aa5

Though there be an ocean between them, there are at least two places on this earth named Shrewsbury, and both were wonderful junctions signalled by semaphores. Glad to know that the ones in England still function and manage traffic every day. May they long do so.

MC
Columbia, Missouri USA
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/15 18:39 by ironmtn.

86235 Wrote:
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> The historic town of Shrewsbury in the English West Midlands is a railway junction of five lines and is controlled from four mechanical signal
> boxes, including what is now the world's largest - Severn Bridge Junction. These pictures were taken last weekend - May Day Weekend - which, befitting
> a British public holiday, was characterised by damp and sometimes arather chilly weather :-)

How much longer will these signal boxes remain before "progress" replaces them with more centralized control and color light signals?  The old equipment is wonderful to see, and local control where the signalman can see everything has a lot of advantages in congested areas.  And what about the condition of the track?  It doesn't look too good.  Weeds are a sure sign of a dirty ballast section and poor drainage.

ironmtn Wrote:
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> Though there be an ocean between them, there are
> at least two places on this earth named
> Shrewsbury, and both were wonderful junctions
> signalled by semaphores. Glad to know that the
> ones in England still function and manage traffic
> every day. May they long do so.
>
> MC
> Columbia, Missouri USA
>  
One of the delights for the traveller from the UK in N America is coming across place names (like Shrewsbury) which originate back home. It can be a bit disconcerting to find them all in the wrong order, but great fun all the same. My best memory is riding the Empire Builder through Rugby and Glasgow, both major stops on the West Coast main line  in Britain , but which appear to be wayside halts in the US.

Shrewsbury and its signals are very special, is there a present day American equivalent?

Great pics, thanks



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/15 20:53 by spflow.

I am certain that the compexity of possible rail tracks in images #1-2 are why I became a railfan.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/05/15 21:50 by NH2006.

Of the five routes that converge on Shrewsbury two, to Crewe and Birmingham, are now controlled from regional control centres with modern modular colour light signals, the Cambrian to Aberystwyth and Pwllheli is the first application of ERTMS in the UK, which dispenses with fixed signals. Only the Shrewsbury and Hereford and the line north towards Chester retains a mixture of Track Circuit Block and Absolute Block working controlled by wayside boxes. So slowly but surely traditional signalling is being replaced. How long before Shrewsbury succumbs is unclear, but when it happens an alternative use for Severn Bridge Junction box will have to be found as it has a preservation order on it.

NH2006 Wrote:
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> I am certain that the compexity of possible rail
> tracks in images #1-2 are why I became a railfan.

Absolutely! and of course far too expensive to be built in 00 gauge.

spflow Wrote:
> Shrewsbury and its signals are very special, is
> there a present day American equivalent?
>
> Great pics, thanks

For a busy junction still with semaphores, I don't think so. Semaphores are becoming very rare over here, as posts here on TO have noted. I think the largest extant group (and not a very large one) is along the former Santa Fe (today BNSF) line in northern New Mexico used by Amtrak's Southwest Chief. There are a good number of images on the site.

As far as just a junction with kind of complexity and route and train density that Shrewsbury has, two come to mind: Zoo Junction on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor in the heart of center city Philadelphia, Pennsylvania near very busy 30th Street Station; and Santa Fe Junction Interlocking in central Kansas City, Missouri (and extending into Kansas City, Kansas -- the state line bisects the junction), also near Kansas City Union Station, which is mainly a museum today with limited Amtrak service.

Neither has semaphores, but both are distinctive otherwise for signalling. Zoo (at the heart of the former Pennsylvania Railroad) uses PRR's position light signals (updated by Amtrak to color position lights). Santa Fe Jct. has many single-lens searchlight signals, so many in dense profusion that I have called it "Searchlight Forest" here on TO. They are however in the process of being replaced with the hooded 3-lens color light signals. I have only ridden through Zoo, as has almost anyone who has traveled on the NEC. It is a large and complex plant, but sprawling with several flyovers -- you see chunks of it, but not the kind of dense crossing trackwork that you might think. Santa Fe Junction on the other hand is dense and compact, like Shrewsbury, mostly at grade with many diamonds and crossovers, but also with several spectacular flyovers, and tremendous freight traffic of all kinds. Highly accessible for railfans, you can park right near the junction just off railroad property and watch the action for hours. For my money (and I think many other fans would say the same, including many here on TO), it is one of the premier railfan locations in North America. Many images here on TO and elsewhere for both junctions, but Santa Fe Junction particularly. It is all remotely controlled from the Kansas City Terminal Railway's dispatching center, although the tower still stands at the heart of the junction. I think Zoo is now also remotely controlled, but others who know the NEC better than I can check me on that.

I've studies your marvelous images of Shrewsbury some more, Nick, and thank you again for sharing them. What an incredible location! It's now on my list, and near the top to be sure. Thanks so much again for sharing them.

MC
Columbia, Missouri USA

My pleasure, glad you like them. I went through Zoo Interlocking in 2013 en route from Philly to Harrisburg, tried to work out what picture taking locations there but was told it's not in a nice neighbourhood.

spflow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ironmtn Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
>
> > Though there be an ocean between them, there
> are
> > at least two places on this earth named
> > Shrewsbury, and both were wonderful junctions
> > signalled by semaphores. Glad to know that the
> > ones in England still function and manage
> traffic
> > every day. May they long do so.
> >
> > MC
> > Columbia, Missouri USA
> >  
> One of the delights for the traveller from the UK
> in N America is coming across place names (like
> Shrewsbury) which originate back home. It can be a
> bit disconcerting to find them all in the wrong
> order, but great fun all the same. My best memory
> is riding the Empire Builder through Rugby and
> Glasgow, both major stops on the West Coast main
> line  in Britain , but which appear to be wayside
> halts in the US.
>
> Shrewsbury and its signals are very special, is
> there a present day American equivalent?
>
> Great pics, thanks

When my dad and I went over the first time he claimed that the cities in Britain were named after various battleships. I claimed that the British came up with the names for their cities from places in Ontario. Many of the people from Britain liked our theories but warned us that we may have been wrong.

On my second trip to the UK, which I took by myself I spent a night in Shrewsbury. I rode the buses to the launderette then went to look for the signal boxes. I ended up watching a bowling match* in Shrewsbury for an hour or so when I was actually looking for picture views of the semaphores. Prepare for this kind of unplanned diversion if you are from the US and go to Britain. Next day I rode the trains and buses and also walked to take pictures of quite a few of the signal boxes going toward Hereford. It ended up being one of the more rewarding areas to visit in the UK. Shrewsbury and the whole area are worth a visit even if you have someone with you who does not want to look at trains or buses only. Thank you Nick. I cant believe it's already been nine months ago since I was there.

Picture *Bowling with the wooden balls on ground, not bowling alley type bowling that we do here in the US which the Brits call ten pin bowling. The big monster signalbox is basically to the left of this picture.

Jim

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Jim - it's a great picture, but where are the fat ladies in white?

Wonderful, thanks very much.  I came across Shrewsbury completely up expecting it in 2013, what a thrill!

i also live in the STl Mo area, used ride my bicycle some distance to see Frisco action at our
Shrewsury.

Charles Rice
Saint Louis, MO