Canterbury East Signal Box

Canterbury East Signal Box was opened around 1911 by the South Eastern & Chatham Railway, designed by them. It features a wooden superstructure clad in horizontal weatherboarding and topped with a hipped slate roof, supported by an open steel frame.

The structure has a four-bay design, with an operating room above a low enclosed locking room. The front, or south-west side, is fully glazed with eight horizontally sliding sash windows, each consisting of four panes, and there are additional four-pane casement windows at each end. The wide eaves are held up by fretted wooden brackets, and above the main windows are top-lights divided into three panes, which are now painted over. An iron access balcony is located outside the windows, and the signal box is accessed via an external flight of wooden steps on the north-west side, which has two stages and a landing, leading to a part-glazed door. The timber superstructure is supported by a steel framework with eight vertical channel section piers, along with cross bracing and angle brackets. The rodding for points and signals is visible within the open structure.

Inside, the roof and walls are boarded but partially concealed by a suspended ceiling. The main equipment is a lever frame that predates the signal box, manufactured in-house by the London, Chatham & Dover Railway Company, one of the companies that formed the South Eastern & Chatham Railway. This lever frame, designed around 1878, features a simple 'direct tappet' mechanism with horizontal tappets, requiring minimal depth below the signalman's floor for the locking room. It was one of the last two of its type in service when the box closed at Christmas 2011, and no examples of this type are held in the National Railway Museum Collection.