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Back in the 1960s, Dudleyport was the largest of the boxes on the Stour Valley that I got to work. The mechanical box was situated on a double track main line using Absolute Block signalling. The next box to the left (the Birmingham direction) was Albion. The next box to the right was Mond Gas Company's Sidings, which was usually 'switched out' (closed), making the block section Dudleyport to Watery Lane. Between Dudleyport and Watery Lane there were also two additional goods line, paired by direction. The goods lines used Permissive Block signalling whereby a second (or subsequent) train could be allowed into an occupied section. The line diverging top right joined the South Stafford Line at Sedgley Junction, giving access to Dudley. This was also Absolute Block.
When the Stour Valley Line was constructed, it lay a few miles away from the important town of Dudley, so the branch was constructed to get passengers the rest of the way. The name 'Dudley-Port' indicates that your journey to Dudley was not quite over. The more usual euphemism was 'Road' - 'Clarbiston Road', for instance, was nowhere near the village. Although there were originally some through trains to Dudley, most passengers had to change onto the 'Dudley Dodger', a 'push-pull' or 'railmotor' train, which waited in the third platform. Passengers from Birmingham only had to cross the island platform to reach the 'Dodger' but, in the opposite direction, passengers from Dudley to Birmingham had to go through the subway to the up platform.
Although I remember push-pull fitted 2-6-2 tanks on the 'Dodger', by the early sixties when I got to work Dudleyport box, the service had reduced to a couple of trips a day operated by a single-car DMU, invariably called the 'Bubble Car'. Other DMUs worked the locals but, apart from some main-line diesels, trains were still steam-hauled.
The area had one other claim to fame - Palethorpes Sausage factory was only a short distance away. In 1896 this was the largest sausage producer in the world! Every afternoon, most of their production was loaded into their own railway vans at their private siding, brought up to Dudleyport and individual vehicles were attached to various expresses which stopped at Dudleyport for the purpose. In the morning, the empties would be returned and taken back to the Palethorpes siding. Under cost pressure from supermarkets, production was moved in 1967 to a new plant at Market Drayton.
All the points were mechanically operated, all the signals were semaphore, single wire operated, apart from the down distant. When Albion's down starting signal was converted to a colour light, Dudleyport controlled the change from yellow to green. One remarkable survivor was the platform starter from the bay platform, which was a lower-quadrant London and North Western signal with a wooden post. The main arm (lever 14) allowed trains onto the branch to Dudley. There were then two subsidiary semaphore arms mounted on brackets - the left one (lever 15) read to the carriage sidings, the right one (lever 16) read to the Down Goods.
Note that 'Up' and 'Down' on the branch were labelled to correspond with the South Stafford Line, which the branch joined at the next box, Sedgley Junction. Thus, a Down train on the main line turning left at Dudleyport would suddenly become an 'Up' train.
The box itself was a standard London and North Western design with a brick base and 70-lever frame. As was standard on the London and North Western and many railways, the frame was on the track side so that the signalman faced the tracks as he worked the levers. Continuous windows on the track side plus windows at each end of the box gave a view of movements outside. However, the block shelf above the levers partially obstructed the view and as more electrical equipment, such as signal light repeaters, was often added as time went on, visibility could be impaired. Later L.M.S. and British Rail practice was to place the frame away from the track so that, in theory, the view towards the track was less obstructed. Personally, I have always preferred the original arrangement.
Down trains on the main line required levers 2 (Home 1), 3 (Home 2 on the big wooden gantry spanning the main lines), 4 (starter on the large tubular post signal) and, finally, 1 (the distant). The top six inches of lever 1 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.
Up trains on the main line required levers 69, 68, 67 and finally 70. Now this lever remained mechanical and certainly required some effort. The wire operated the weight bar for signal 70b, which was mounted underneath Mond Gas Company's Sidings signal. The wire then extended further to operate the weight bar for signal 70a, underneath Watery Lane's Up Starter. Electrical repeaters on the block shelf showed how successful you'd been at "giving the driver the back 'uns", that is, clearing the distant signals so that an approaching driver knew that all your signals were "Off". These repeaters could show 'ON' (signal arm horizontal, displaying a warning to an approaching train), 'OFF' (signal arm raised through 45 degrees) or just 'WRONG' which was somewhere in between the two valid positions.
>Matters obviously became more interesting if you were also dealing with freight trains on the goods lines, a train on the branch, or performing some shunting. There are many points of interest in the layout and maybe we'll return to Dudleyport again.
