Canterbury East Signal Box

DATE: opened circa 1911 by the South Eastern & Chatham Railway to their own design.

MATERIALS: wooden superstructure clad in horizontal weatherboarding with hipped slate roof. The superstructure is supported on an open steel frame.

PLAN: four bay superstructure consisting of an operating room with a low enclosed locking room below, supported on an open steel frame.

EXTERIOR: the front or south-west side is continuously glazed with eight horizontally-sliding sash windows, each of four panes with a further four-pane casement window carried round at each end. The wide eaves are supported on fretted wooden brackets and above the principal windows are top-lights, each divided into three panes, now painted over. There is an iron access balcony outside the windows. The box is accessed by an external flight of wooden steps on the north-west side, divided into two stages with a landing, through a part glazed door. The timber superstructure is supported on a steel framework, with eight vertical channel section piers, with further cross bracing and angle brackets. The rodding to points and signals is exposed within the open structure of this framework.

INTERIOR: boarded roof and walls partially concealed by suspended ceiling. The main equipment is the lever frame which pre-dates the signal box and is of the type manufactured in house by the London, Chatham & Dover Railway Company, one of the constituent companies which formed the South Eastern & Chatham Railway. The design of lever frame is a comparatively early one of circa 1878 with a simple 'direct tappet' mechanism with horizontal tappets which required only a small depth below the signalman's floor for the locking room. The frame was one of the last two of this type in service when the box was closed at Christmas 2011; no example of this type is held in the National Railway Museum Collection.