page_title: Bromley Cross railway station
section_title: Signal Box
hierarchical_section_title: Bromley Cross railway station / Signal Box
caption_attribution_description: English: Bromley Cross railway station
context_page_description: Bromley Cross railway station, situated in Bromley Cross, a suburb to the north of Bolton, England, is served by the Northern 'Ribble Valley' line 2 ³⁄₄ miles north of Bolton. It is situated on Chapeltown Road. The station is just south of the point where the double line merges into one.
context_section_description: The Grade II-listed signal box at the station is a Smith and Yardley type 1 brick box opened in December 1875, almost certainly timed to service the new connections to short sidings that were opened that winter, these works being checked and then approved with minor modifications by the Board of Trade inspector Colonel Hutchinson in documentation dated February 1876. One interesting requirement was that the wicket gates had to be locked by levers in the signal cabin and this basic protection can now be dated with certainty to that time. The box, one of three types, was supplied by Manchester-based Emily Sophia Yardley, a widow who had taken over her late husband's ironmongery business, together with her step-brother William Smith, who was recorded in the April 1861 Census records as being an 'engineer' aged 21. The extension to the goods yard at the station by the early 1900s, together with new loop lines and increased signalling, brought about an enlargement of the lever frame in the signal box. Inserting this new frame probably required the partial removal of some of the front brickwork of the 1875 cabin. This can be seen today in the distinct contrast between much older brick lower down and a quite different brick face on the upper area. The signal box has an operating floor which is 8 ft 7in above the platform level, according to early LYR Engineer's Office drawings. Bromley Cross signal box formerly acted as a 'fringe' to the power boxes at Preston (which controls the line to Blackburn) and Manchester Piccadilly (which supervises the passing loop and line south towards Bolton) - their train description systems were incompatible with each other and so the box here was retained to act as a link between them. Its sole use now is to supervise the adjacent pedestrian foot crossing and the protecting signals (with four working levers), since the interface between the two signalling centres has been upgraded so that they can communicate directly.
  In circa 2004 the signal box was modernised with timber work replaced in PVC (the windows were replaced in a different pattern), and new steel steps and an oversized metal safety cage finally added. In November 2016 the foot crossing was entirely renewed, also the short timber-topped former link platform running under the front of the signal box removed, so exposing the lowest brick layers of the box for the first time in many decades.
caption: Bromley Cross Station showing original low level platform and Signal Box
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