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.
