Great Western Coffee Shop

Does this box use levers or a panel?  The signals in the Penzance area are color lights so I would have thought a panel would be used but levers are visible from outside the box.

I don't have any technical expertise or local knowledge but remember that the box might control points as well as signals.  Levels for point, buttons/switches for colour lights would be a possibility.  As would the retention of the level frame to control just one or two little used points on a little used and unmodermised siding.

I believe the colour light signals are controlled by levers

You are correct, the lever frame contols all points and signals in the area as far as Marazion. The level crossing at Long Rock is controlled by a small push button unit located on the block shelf.

Ok, a technical question then.

Why are the original levels controlling colour lights.  Wouldn't it be eaiser to put the electrical control switches on a panel in the 'box rather than having to install some electrical device to detect teh position of the level? .  Is it because the original mechanical interlocking which is linked to the levels is retained?  i can't think of any other reason why it might be so.

The mechanical interlocking is indeed still in place.  I think the fact it was done in this way was that a panel & colour lights would have been regarded as a resignalling scheme wheras just replacing the mechanical signals with colour lights would not.  This may have made it easier to obtain funding for in BR days.

Interestingly, as an aside, when the Exeter Salisbury Line was singled and re-signalled in the late 60's the lever frames were retained to operate the new colour lights.

The tradgedy of that singling was that we on the Southern had spent the early sixties installing colour light distances at most boxes on the double track railway from Salisbury to  Exeter only for them to be ripped out a few years later.

Also when signals or points are electrically operated from a full size lever the shiny hand grip is usually shortened (halfed) so that you can't do a two handed pull and injure yourselve putting too much force on the lever, which will move with minimal force one handed.
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Another interesting (or not) thing I learned from a cab ride video of Salisbury-Exeter that I have from the late 80s states that around Gillingham they had one of the first bits of continuously welded track on one line (but not the other) rather than jointed track - for the layman, continuously welded track is smoother and doesn't have a continuous clickety-clack noise. Naturally when the line was singled in 1967 the Western Region decided to take up the welded track to use elsewhere and leave the jointed one there for another 20 years.

On the subject of the Cornish lines, it's amazing how the semaphore signals can give it the feel of another era. The Looe branch in particular is like another world.

Semaphore signals? Try round Worcester if you want a 1950s or 1960s (or earlier) feel.

Hi there

I'm a Signalman in the area and have some shots of Penzance on my web site craig-munday.fotopic.net

Here are a couple:

(http://images.fotopic.net/y7weel.jpg)

(http://images.fotopic.net/y7weej.jpg)

You can make out the signal indications set into the overhead diagram - now unique to Cornwall.

Are the blue/black levers combined FPLs and point motors?

Yes  :)