Waterhouses (North Stafford)

[MRFS]

Does anyone have a diagram or plan of this location, please? I'm currently drawing together some notes on Leek and Manifold signalling and I know Waterhouses (in the latter years) was a 10 lever frame with one spare. I have a suspicion that there were homes and starters on both the standard and narrow gauge, plus a distant (possibly) on the standard gauge and two locked points also on the standard gauge.

I think the spare may have been a midway bolt to a local groundframe on the narrow gauge. The local frame would have worked slotted joints on a pair of sprung points in a very short 'automatic' loop on the approaches to the 2' 6" gauge platform.

[John Hinson]

Does anyone have a diagram or plan of this location, please? I'm currently drawing together some notes on Leek and Manifold signalling and I know Waterhouses (in the latter years) was a 10 lever frame with one spare. I have a suspicion that there were homes and starters on both the standard and narrow gauge, plus a distant (possibly) on the standard gauge and two locked points also on the standard gauge.

I think the spare may have been a midway bolt to a local groundframe on the narrow gauge. The local frame would have worked slotted joints on a pair of sprung points in a very short 'automatic' loop on the approaches to the 2' 6" gauge platform.

G'day, sorry to have been so long surfacing.

Here are the arrangements at 1922, which I think are reasonably accurate:
Waterhouses Yard: https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=1175
Waterhouses (Manifold): https://signalbox.org/diagrams.php?id=1174

The latter doesn't show slotted joints on the loop but I wouldn't argue.

Best regards,

John

[MRFS]

Goodness, John. That completely changes the recieved wisdom. Utterly. Many thanks indeed. Would it be possible to ask what the sources are for these two drawings, please?

Conventional wisdom has it at the single frame on the standard gauge (the covering of which is now on the Amerton Railway), with no reference to a separate frame on the narrow gauge. There is one photograph that gives a clear view of rodding to the points in the narrow gauge, and a North Stafford drawing that seems to indicate handworked points and a plethora of traps - well well. I shall have to search and see where the narrow gauge frame could have been.

Crumbs. This really is a game-changer.

[John Hinson]

Goodness, John. That completely changes the recieved wisdom. Utterly. Many thanks indeed. Would it be possible to ask what the sources are for these two drawings, please?

They come from a large-format book at the National Archive ("PRO" when I was there!) which was a survey covering most of the North Staffordshire Railway system in 1922. The drawings are quite crude in terms of proportion and have occasional errors or omissions which probably indicate they were drawn "on site" by a non-professional draughtsman but in general are quite accurate in the detail.

I am sure it would still be available there for inspection.

John