Wood Green siding

I've got the peril for Wood Green - but I think it's amalgamating all the previous instructions.

As I'm currently at work I'll check at home - however if it isn't there I would be quite interested in knowing the distances from the FRLs or shunt signal.

Not three-car, but four-car - AFAIK the 1972mkI that lives on the Aldwych branch reverses at Wood Green, and IIRC a four-car 1972mkI is almost the same length as a 3-car 1973TS.

Most of the maintenance I did in the area was delta spreads, points and tripcock testers apart from changing relays in the IMR. I don't recall the actual repeater, RPG10, it's not that surprising really as the only time I went into the siding in recent years was to reset the siding circuit breaker while testing the siding TT circuit in Engineering Hours but I saw it on the IMR diagram when locally testing the signalling from the frame.

It was I think late 1978 when we took out Wood Green signal cabin replacing it with a temporary platform really room on the east end of the eastbound controlled from Arnos Grove signal cabin.
I remember that night as a long night, indeed we took out the old frame and loaded it onto a train during the changeover shift, I believe it was going to a preservation group somewhere. During the Saturday night changeover not everything went smoothly, a new electronic train describer system was installed to replace the RSTD. It had been trialled at Earls Court I believe but it wasn't working correctly, of the many of us involved in the changeover (virtually the whole of Whitechapel New Works) about 20 of us were asked to remain while everyone else returned to depot on the first westbound train. For the most part we were just tidying up while the TD lineman and installation supervisors were trying to rectify the TD problems. ISTR that one, two or possibly more eastbound trains had passed through the site okay during this time. Then the first Sunday morning east to west reverser came in and when signalled took the route. The train entered the siding and berthed but the points remained reverse and locked, 'F' track remaining down.
Apparently at some point prior to the changeover F & G tracks had somehow been transposed on the incoming fuses in the temporary relay room. The Tester then took my supervisor into the relay room, expelling everyone else, closing both doors and gave him a dressing down and an appointment for his DB. My supervisor had been the one responsible for pretesting the new wiring on nights so he had to carry the can even though a gang on days had worked on the wiring, labelling the fuses in the relay room, after we had tested it.
I was working the track dropping board on the changeover, it was a task I did often, and I recall the tester asking me to drop F for Freddie then repeating it. I replied that I had dropped F for Freddie and he then asked me to drop G for George. I have always felt that he missed a discrepancy at that point but what did I know as I was only a semiskilled wireman at the time. My supervisor was 'dropped' though he remained in a New Works depot in an admin capacity no longer allowed to work without supervision. I and the rest of his gang, particularly my chargehand, felt this was a travesty as he was far more competent than one of his peers who was also working on site and was legend at blame shifting (these days he would have been called Teflon but that slang was not in use at the time!).

These days Wood Green siding is a single track, H, and delta H detects the front of a berthing train so presumably RPG10 is a train's length and a few feet or thereabouts west of the fixed head trainstop, the only blockjoint being the one between F and H tracks.

As promised.


With the associated shunt at danger.


...and with the shunt cleared.

Cheers. I'll add that as a footnote in the Wood Green peril.