Bristol Resignalling - from Bristol Panel Signal Box to Thames Valley Signal Centre (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[DaveHarries]

The canopies on higher numbered platforms are not listed.

Indeed. And it is those canopies I refer to. Thinking about it I guess that the location of this signalling mount is due to the fact that some CrossCountry workings terminate in Platform 6 but I would have thought that you could hang the signal from the canopy at the very north end of Platform 6 in the same way as shown in the second photo.

Dave

[Bmblbzzz]

Hmm.  I'm inclined to agree with bignosemac - my rather vague memory suggests that the outer / newer platform canopies are not so listed, as they're not part of the iconic I K Brunel / Francis Fox design.

And it is certain that the platform 14 canopy is not listed.  Anywhere. 

Just as platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross takes you to Hogwarts, so platform 14 at Temple Meads is reserved for special trains to Clifton College. 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm a huge fan of the motto written above the door of the former Kirkaldy Testing Works...

So here are the listing details for Bristol Temple Meads:

ST5972 TEMPLE WAY 901-1/42/292 (North East side) 01/11/66 Temple Meads Station

GV I

Railway station. 1865-78. By Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt. For Great Western Railway and Midland Railway. Additional platforms of 1930-5. Conglomerate with limestone dressings. Booking office with forward projecting screens to train sheds. Tudor Revival style. 2 storeys; 3-window range, with single storey; 19-window range to right and 17-window range to left. Booking office has a symmetrical crenellated front with lower angled side blocks and a central 2-stage tower, and octagonal turrets to the corners; ground-floor 4-centred arches have banded Purbeck marble shafts, a label mould with quatrefoil spandrels, and C20 doors; first floor has 6-light square-headed windows with transoms and cinquefoil heads, stilted labels over panels with quatrefoils over the middle window; a half-quatrefoil arcade below the parapet, with blind lancets to the merlons; the turrets have 2 crenellated courses below pyramidal tops. The tower has an arcade of engaged shafts which pass through the drip to pointed arches, under a large square panel and clock with a trefoil-headed blind arcade above. The shed screens have mullion and transom windows separated by octagonal buttresses, with a glazed cast-iron canopy all around the frontage. INTERIOR: high booking office of brick with octagonal tas-de-charges, but a C20 concrete ceiling; mezzanine with panelled ceiling and 4-centre arched windows with 4 lights and intersecting tracery. The main train shed has a 2-centred trussed roof with traceried arch braces on octagonal corbel shafts and black diaper work under the eaves. Further platforms of 1930-5 by PE Culverhouse have cream terracotta buildings with BRISTOL in glazed letters. HISTORICAL NOTE: the station was a joint venture between the Great Western Railway and the Midland Railway, and was originally called Bristol Joint Station. It had a steep French Empire roof to the tower, which was destroyed in the Second World War, and crockets to the turret tops. The later Temple Meads station uniquely shows, with the Bristol Old Station (qv) at Temple Meads, the growth of a major terminus over more than a century. (Gomme A, Jenner M and Little B: Bristol, An Architectural History: Bristol: 1979-: 348).

So yes, Platform 14 is not Grade I listed. But the rest is.

[Chris from Nailsea]

Thank you for correcting my rather hazy memory with some fascinating facts there, Red Squirrel. 

[Phantom]

There is an even worst bit of construction a bit further down platform 5 that has also recently appeared

[Red Squirrel]

As an aside, I recently read a statement of the demolition method for the old Post Office building which went into some detail when describing how some steel joists bedded into the retaining wall of Temple Meads Station would be removed without spoiling the listed building. The plan is to chop them out and then brick up the hole using matching materials, leaving the padstones in place so that the feature remains 'readable'...

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the (I hope we can all agree now) Grade I listed station, NR^» (Network Rail - home page) gaily erect lighting, signalling and signage systems that would give even the most brutal Brutalist the willies.

[chuffed]

I thought it was the recent refurbishment of the Gentleman's facilities at Bristol Temple Meads that gave everyone the willies......

[martyjon]

Do you mean Bristol Temple Meads-over-Avon-New-Cut

[JayMac]

First and foremost it is an operational station, not a museum piece.

Don't forget, leccyfication is coming too...*





*Well, the wires may come down Filton Bank into Temple Meads sometime this century.

[Red Squirrel]

First and foremost it is an operational station, not a museum piece.

Is that a fact, or an opinion?

[JayMac]

Well, the first part of my sentence is fact. 

[eightf48544]

I have heard tha that teh non standards St. Andrews Cross permissive stop signals at the mid point (change to odd and even) of several platforms will be replaced with proper colour lights so will presumably require massive poles to tie up  the Great Britain.

[SandTEngineer]

I have heard tha that teh non standards St. Andrews Cross permissive stop signals at the mid point (change to odd and even) of several platforms will be replaced with proper colour lights so will presumably require massive poles to tie up  the Great Britain.

You obviously haven't read the previous posts in this topic......

[SandTEngineer]

Just to let everybody know that Stage 4 of the re-control (Nailsea - Bristol Temple Meads station area - Stapleton Road) was commissioned on time at 0340 this morning (Tuesday 04 April 2018), and the possession given up at 0359 as planned.

[SandTEngineer]

....but, NR^» (Network Rail - home page) still trying to claim its the largest ever 're-signalling' done in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).... I'm sure a few old S&T^▸ (Signalling and Telegraph) hands would be rolling their eyes at that statement, and you can include me in that....