Signal box, Portrush Railway Station, Eglinton Street, Portrush, Co Antrim, BT56

A two-storey signal box at Portrush Railway Station, erected by the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway in the 1890s to a design by Berkeley Deane Wise, their Chief Engineer. The box is one of the few remaining signal boxes in Northern Ireland with a hand-operated mechanical signal frame, making it a nationally rare survival.

The building stands aligned north-south along the railway line just beyond the southern end of the 'up' (eastern) platform. It is constructed of brick with painted cement render, and topped with a hipped natural slate roof featuring deep oversailing eaves with boarded soffits. A small metal flue projects from the south-east corner, and plastic rainwater goods have been fitted.

The first floor contains the signalling levers and is accessed by a replacement steel external staircase on the north elevation. The northern, western and southern elevations are timber-framed at this level. A small staircase stands at the top of the external stairs, in front of a semi-glazed doorway; to the left is a 2x2 timber window. The western elevation, which faces the railway line, features three contiguous panels each containing two sets of 3x2 timber windows. A painted stucco platband runs below these windows with attached wooden letters reading 'Portrush' in a painted surround; this banding extends around the north and south sides without lettering. The southern elevation has two 2x2 windows at first-floor level above an infilled segmental-headed window opening with a concrete cill at ground floor. The eastern elevation is blank.

At ground-floor level, the north elevation has a flat-headed metal-sheeted door. The western elevation has two infilled segmental-headed window openings. A single-storey lean-to with a monopitched artificial slate roof, plastic rainwater goods and sheeted door abuts the ground floor on the right. Signal rods run out from the base of the ground floor, under the tracks to pulleys and onwards to the points.

The signal box is accompanied by three semaphore 'lower quadrant' signals with centrally pivoted arms accessed by inclined metal ladders—one wooden post at the southern end of the 'up' platform and two identical signals at the southern end of the 'down' platform.

The cabin at Coleraine Station is similar in design. Although recently refurbished with its original exposed red brickwork now rendered over, the box retains original character in its deep eaves, timber-framed first floor, and external staircase (albeit replaced). The hand-operated lever connections to linking rods on the ground floor remain, representing a rare survival of the original mechanical signalling system.

Portrush Station was the northern terminus of the Coleraine-Portrush branch line, originally built in 1853-55 as the main line between Ballymena and Portrush by William Dargan for the Ballymena, Ballymoney, Coleraine & Portrush Junction Railway. The line was sold to the Belfast & Northern Counties Railway in 1861. In 1891, under the direction of Chief Engineer Berkeley Deane Wise, the railway company began major upgrading work on the Coleraine-Portrush line, including rebuilding the station building (opened in 1893) and installing new signalling infrastructure, of which this signal box is an example. It first appears on Ordnance Survey maps in 1904 at the southern end of the station platforms. The Belfast & Northern Counties Railway was taken over by the Midland Railway (Northern Counties Committee) in 1903, reconstituted as the London, Midland & Scottish Railway (Northern Counties Committee) in 1923, and nationalised in 1949 when the Ulster Transport Authority took control. The signal box remains in everyday use and now survives in its original setting at the southern end of the station, where it retains group value with the original station building and water tower.