Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway signalling survivors:
Shunting siganls at Llangower, Bala Lake Railway
The loop and station is assessable from a car park on the B4403, with the path immediately crossing the railway on its way to the fore shore.
The item of interest is the Down bracket signal on the station platform, to the left of the level crossing. The signalling at both ends of the loop is disconnected, and the Down starter removed.
The bracket signal at the other end of the loop looks similar but features replica arms, which were cast with 'Bala Lake Railway' proudly incorporated in the spectacle plate castings.
George Barnes set the loop up so that the points at both ends, plus the signals (which originally included a distant arm) were all worked by just four levers. However, staff at Bala have told me that for it all to work properly required very careful lubrication, as there was a 'heavy' reliance on the weight of the signal arms for it all to work. The loop was last used during the 1990 Gala.
As can be seen in the image below, the Down bracket signal features two shunting signal arms: the one on the left is a 1912-type whilst the one on the right is the earlier Raynar Wilson type. The fact that George resorted to casting replicas for the Up bracket suggests that care had been taken to acquire one of each type of signal, and that they was - until early 2009 - a complete set of each L&YR signal type on the railway.
It was thought the "signal box" contained a L&YR frame, but I am grateful to the Marquis de Carabais who has found an image on Flickr showing that it is, in fact. a Dutton L&SWR frame. It seemed a shame not to include this unusual view of the shed, so it is here for 'context'.
Copyright J K Wallace, t/a 'Hall Royd Junction' 2013-2023 email: Hall Royd Junction
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