John Hinson wrote:Gristhorpe seems to match all the points you make too. No pun intended! There were no points at Gristhorpe but nevertheless every quadrant has the notches.
Maybe the presence of notches on all levers depended on whether you included installation by McK&H in the contract or just had frames supplied without McK&H having any knowledge of the layout.
One point I'd make is that point/lockbar levers are prevented from moving beyond the first notch in the 1873 pattern frames I'm familiar with. In other words, the lever travel for rod operated functions is fixed. (It would be impossible to correctly adjust the point or lockbar if the signalman could vary the travel at will.) This is achieved by a projection on the floorplate that prevents the lever from moving beyond the first notch when required.
In Victoria you can find frames with a mixture of 1/3 reverse notch floor plates, and all 3 reverse notch floor plates. Not all of these are 1873 pattern frames as we changed around 1910 to an inhouse cam and tappet frame, but the floor plates were all interchangable. I haven't investigated this in detail, but the frames with a mixture of floor plates are the older frames.
If you use both 1 and 3 reverse notches, you need to keep four different patterns of floor plate in stock. Instead, what they did locally was to have one floor plate with 3 reverse notches on both sides. It had a projection on each side which stopped the lever going beyond the first reverse notch. If it was a signal lever that was supposed to move beyond the first notch, you got a chisel and knocked off the projection.
I don't know whether this design change was originated by McKenzie & Holland, or by the local railway. But it does seem a fairly obvious design change, particularly if you are making up frames from second hand parts and are casting up new floorplates.