Pulborough Signal Box

Pulborough Signal Box

This is a two-storey rectangular signal box of two bays long by one bay wide, built in yellow brick with red brick panels and a hipped slate roof with overhanging eaves supported on timber brackets.

The ground floor is a tall locking room with red brick recessed panels set between yellow brick piers. The main south-east elevation features two panels, each with a central three-course horizontal yellow brick band that rises over a four-pane round-headed timber-framed window to form a rubbed brick round arch with a projecting keystone. The rear elevation has a central yellow brick chimney stack flanked by plain red brick panels on both ground and first floors. The end walls are of plain red brick, and the locking room is entered through a door in the south-west elevation with a flat concrete lintel.

Access to the first-floor operations room is via a two-flight timber stair with an extended timber landing carried on cast-iron London Brighton & South Coast Railway brackets produced by Taylor Brothers of Sandacre. The landing is occupied by a secondary glazed timber-framed and weather-boarded porch, approached by timber stairs. This porch has a felt clad mono-pitch roof and is accessed through the main structure.

The first-floor operations room is timber-framed. The two end elevations retain the original four-pane rounded-corner sliding Yorkshire windows. The six sliding four-pane windows to the main elevation are modern timber replacements, but the original distinctive rounded-end toplights remain, although painted over. Similar toplights exist in the end walls, with those in the south-west elevation obscured by the porch. The roof is hipped and slate clad with dark grey ridge tiles, a galvanized steel ventilator set centrally in the ridge, timber plank soffits, and distinctive timber brackets with cuboid stops supporting the overhanging eaves.

The operations room is entered from the porch through an original four-panel timber door with the top two panels glazed. The room is equipped with a secondary 1905-pattern London Brighton & South Coast Railway lever frame with slots for twenty-nine levers, of which only twenty-five are occupied. The present frame faces the rear of the operations room, whereas the original faced the front, similar to that at Berwick Signal Box in East Sussex. A fireplace once stood centrally in the back wall but is now blocked. The blockshelf survives with working late-19th-century 'up' and 'down' block instruments and gongs, together with block indicator dials. These are supplemented by a 1980s period track circuit diagram and modern computers. Two British Railway (S) signal cable tensioning wheels remain in situ and a suspended fibreboard ceiling has been inserted.

The locking room houses signal cable pulleys, the mechanical locking-frame trays, and modern electrical relay locking, together with a range of electronic signalling relays, some of Southern Railway manufacture predating nationalisation, and wall-mounted transformer boxes manufactured by W.R. Sykes and Co. Ltd. of Clapham, London.