Deepfields was one of the Stour Valley signal boxes I worked unofficially in the 1960s. Bloomfield Junction was the next box towards Birmingham (left of diagram), Spring Vale Sidings the next box in the Wolverhampton direction (right of box diagram). It was a standard ex-L.N.W. box with a brick base. At that time, Deepfields box was only open during the day and "switched out" at night.
On the up side of the line at Sprng Vale lay a steelworks usually referred to as 'Stewarts and Lloyds'. This complex extended along the line almost to Deepfields and gave rise to varied railway traffic in and out. The 'third line' on the Spring Vale side of Deepfields was an up and down permissive block goods line. 'Permissive' meant that a second, or subsequent, goods train could be admitted onto the occupied line. The 'fourth line' on the Spring Vale side gave access to a fan of sidings which extended to Spring Vale. There was no block signalling on these sidings and the connection at the Deepfields end was very rarely used.
Most of the running signals were upper quadrant semaphores but the Up Starter (lever 39) was a multiple-aspect colour light. Deepfields cleared it from red to yellow and then Bloomfield Junction cleared the signal from yellow to green as his distant signal. Occupation and clearance of the track circuit in the rear of the signal automatically put the signal back to 'Red', even with the lever still reverse in the frame. Similarly, Bloomfield's Down Starter had been replaced by a colour light so Deepfields' Down Distant lever 1 changed Bloomfield's colour light from yellow to green.
The lever sequence for trains on the Up Main was 40, 39 and 41 and finally 42. The top six inches of lever 39 had been removed, as a reminder to signalmen not to take a swing at it, because the only action of this lever was to work an electrical contact box under the floor. In contrast, the inner distant lever 41 and outer distant lever 42 needed a good pull to get the weight bars "off".
The lever sequence for trains on the down line was 2, 3, 4 and 1. Lever 1 was shortened, being the colour light.
The block shelf mounted two Fletcher's 'DN' absolute block instruments of ex-L.N.W. pattern, plus a third special block instrument for the permissive bi-directional up and down goods line. Although this instrument had two block indicator needles, only one could be used at a time, according to whether the train was 'coming' or 'going'. In addition, the commutator which allowed the block to be set at 'LINE CLEAR', 'TRAIN ON LINE' or, when not in use, 'LINE CLOSED' also included a mechanical reminder device which displayed the total number of trains in the section in a small window.
There were lots of points of interest in both the layout and operation at Deepfields and you can read more at 'Deepfields in Detail'.
