HOW TO… IMPROVE MODEL SIGNAL BOXES

In 1948, British Rail inherited more than 10,000 signal boxes from the Big Four companies. The huge number required meant that you wouldn’t travel very far on the network without seeing several examples. From the steam-era and early diesel-era modeller’s perspective, in particular, this means these are buildings few of us can avoid on our layouts.

The different railway companies employed a variety of designs, something that can fool the unwary modeller who doesn’t look at their prototype. A cast-concrete Southern Railway box would look incongruous on a line set in Scotland where wooden structures with battens across joints were the order of the day. Many companies had a distinct house style, so prototype research is required, not least because designs evolved over the years.

With their large windows crying out for interior detail, scratch-building a signal box is a job