60096 stands on the Arrival line one weekend in 2001. The Arrival is now stopblocked and used for storing locos and wagons.
Bescot Down Tower was commissioned in 1965 and followed the architecture of the Power Signal Boxes of the time. The tower is unusually tall, giving a superb view of the yard.
11 comments:
AWWW YES! And looks like 37216 in the background distant. Monsters everywhere.
A nice & very different angle that i haven't seen before. You are very lucky to be able to get shots from there. Would love to have a look out of the Down Tower even though there's not much to fott nowadays !
A different angle captured. Unusual to get a 60 on mgr's as well.
There was a line below the Tower on a stop block known as "Bamford's siding" - does it still exist or has it been removed ? (I'm not sure if it is shown in your photo).
Bamfords, or the C&W repair siding, was the other side of the tower, between it and the down local sidings. It was removed in 1999. There is a great pic of a '40 standing on Bamfords on Phil Bartletts site.
It was a useful road, often used for stabling tampers.
Sorry but 60s were as regular on MGRs as 66s are at Bescot!
Well there weren't any 60s in the 70s !
I knew Bamfords was on the main line side of the tower, but had got my positioning of your shot mixed up !
For years on end there was an old red-carded empty tank wagon on the stop block there, then one day it had gone... probably fell to bits.
AND... I've just remembered this - When I started on BR in the mid-Seventies, one of my duties was to take across Drivers and Guards documents from the TCS office to the Down Tower for archiving. The files were stored in a room on the floor below the panel room I think, and this room was stacked floor to ceiling with the documents, which were filled in by the traincrews each day and listed which trains and trips went where and at what times, along with the loco numbers !!! A veritable goldmine of written records and information which went back to about 1968 ! Needless to say some of the more interesting Drivers slips disappeared into my possession, but I must have disposed of them decades ago !
The older documents were removed and destroyed officially every 6 months or so (by burning in an incinerator nearby the Tower), or when space ran out.
I wish now I could have taken and stored the whole lot, it would have made fascinating and valuable reading these days...
So thats what that room was used for? Nothing in there now except a few spiders, those slips would make interesting reading now.
Bescot Down Tower must be the least photographed PSB in the West Mids, the location doesn't help. In a couple of years it will be closed, along with Walsall PSB, after over 40 years of service. The end of an era is not far away...
Never mind, you can spend the rest of your days in a bomb-proof shelter without windows (so you can't even see any trains) at the new Saltley Signalling Centre... !
Orwell's 1984 23 years on...
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