Summerlee East Signal Box

Location type


Name and dates

Summerlee East Signal Box

Opened on the Coatbridge Deviation (North British Railway).
Opened on the Hornock Deviation (Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway).

Description

This signal box was just south of Sunnyside Junction and Summerlee Yard. It was located on the deviation built through Coatbridge in 1872 lifting the railway up from street level and avoiding level crossings. The new alignment was to the immediate west of the original line. The signal box was very close to the northern end of this deviation. The box was on the east side of the line and controlled access into the the southern end of the Summerlee yard and its connection to the Summerlee Iron Works. Access to the iron works was via a short branch from the yard which crossed over the Gartsherrie, Hornock and Summerlee Branch of the Monkland Canal.

A southbound train could not enter directly into the iron works unless approaching from the Glasgow direction through the yard ie with the post 1870 alignment a train from the Gartsherrie direction could not enter the iron works or yard.

Originally before the Hornock Deviation opened, allowing the Gartsherrie Iron Works to expand eastwards, lines divided at Howes - the line from the north passed by the Gartsherrie Iron Works before dividing (at a site near the later Summerlee West Junction) into lines to Howes Basin, Summerlee Iron Works, Whifflet and Kipps.

After the Hornock Deviation opened both the original and deviation routes coexisted briefly.

Further alterations were to come. Some of the later yard, dating from the opening of the Glasgow and Coatbridge Branch (North British Railway) of 1870, overlaps the old Howes alignment of the Monkland and Kirkintilloch Railway. The yard survived the closure of the Summerlee Iron Works in 1930.

The signal box closed in 1964.

The railway remains open, largely a single track, from Sunnyside Junction to Whifflet South Junction, a mixture of of the original route and deviations. It was singled to allow the bridge on the Coatbridge Deviation to be strengthened for heavy concrete trains to Gunnie. These no longer run.

Tags

Signal box junction
07/06/2019