Woodhead route

A number of signal box diagrams from the Woodhead line may be found on my signal box diagram pages. This page contains various other Woodhead-related items.

Train reporting via telephone between signal boxes on the Manchester-Sheffield main line. An LNER document dated 1948. Title page, page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7, page 8, page 9, page 10, page 11, page 12, page 13, page 14, page 15, page 16.
Telephone circuits between signal boxes in 1900 Extracts from sections 1 and 4 of the 1900 GCR working timetable. page 1, page 2, page 3, page 4. You will note that these pages also list train telegraph circuits as well as telephone circuits - indeed some routes only had the telegraph, whilst others had both telegraph and telephone. The first document on this page indicates that telephone reporting was the preferred way of doing things in LNER days. Even so, I am informed by a friend - who remembers railway staff who worked on the line - that the telegraph was used on the Wigan-Glazebrook line into BR days.
Still on the subject of telephones, here is an old telephone exchange from the Penistone area which I recently obtained. It is probably out of a signal box - but which one? There are close-ups of the left, centre and right so that you can read the dot-dash codes used to identify particular signal boxes on each circuit. I don't know when it was installed, although it probably came out of use when the Woodhead route closed. It is curious that the trafolite plates refer to locations at the ends of telephone circuits from Penistone - Deepcar, Glasshouse, Courthouse Junction - as indicated in the GCR 1900 WTT, whilst the (more recent?) paper labels refer to locations further afield. Were the telephone circuits reorganised after the installation of this unit with its trafolite plates?