British Railways Layout Plans of the 1950s, Volume 5

Full title: 'The John Swift Collection: British Railways Layout Plans of the 1950s - Volume 5: ex-Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Lines in West Lancashire (includes Fylde joint lines, Wigan to Manchester Victoria and the Liverpool overhead railway'

Published by the Signalling Record Society in 2003, 64pages. A4 size booklet (A39N13WSO)

From the introduction: This book forms part of a collection of signalling diagrams of locations on the former L.M.S.R. in England and Wales, as well as other areas of the G.W.R. and L.N.E.R. transferred to the control of the London Midland Region of British Railways. They were assembled by John Swift in the course of a railway career of some fifty years. After early years as a relief signalman and in the Control Office at Rotherham, John Swift was appointed a member of the Midland Division Shunting Analysis Committee based at Derby, whose work involved the study of operating problems over the whole of the Division. Later he served in other offices at Euston and Crewe. He retired in 1982 as the Head of Section - Operating and Signalling, in the Chief Operating Manager's Office at Crewe, where he was responsible for preparing local and general operating instructions and the approval of new works and alterations.

The diagrams were originally prepared as an aide-memoire for use in discussions of local operating problems conducted away from the location. They are based on personal observations and on the official drawings prepared for operating purposes, rather than those produced for lever frame construction and interlocking which are more often collected by signalling enthusiasts. As a result it will be found that there are sometimes locations for which lever number information is absent or only partially complete. None of the present information is based on conjecture. In view of the number and varying dates of the original sources, small discrepancies will occasionally be found between adjacent diagrams. The locations are drawn in line order with a consistent direction from one page to another. This means that there are locations where the drawing is inverted compared with the conventional style.

In general, the drawings show the situation in the period about 1955-60 immediately prior to the many changes and track recoveries of the 'Beeching Era'. The layouts are not necessarily those at the date of closure.

Signal box closure dates are the official dates approved by the Operating Department for insertion in the "Notices to Traffic", but in a number of cases there is evidence that the actual date of closure was not as given. The information on the diagrams has not been altered, but an appendix has been included which compares these variants as well as instances where the SRS has previously published another date. For various reasons, the precise date and time of a box closure often proves to be very difficult to establish, especially some years after the
event.

The condition of the booklet is generally very good. The covers have one or two minor scuffs but are clean and bright, the staple spine is intact, and all pages are clean, intact, unblemished and tightly bound.