A visit to Manchester Piccadilly Signalling Centre

Adrian, one of my fellow volunteers on the railway at the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester used to work at the Manchester Piccadilly Station Signalling Centre. Tonight he arranged a trip around the centre for about fifteen of us, meeting on the station concourse at 6:00pm.

I decided to devote the day to one of my several volunteer activities; passenger counting for the Mid Cheshire Rail Users Association on the lovely Mid Cheshire line, finishing at Piccadilly in time for the tour of the Centre.

As ever, please click on a picture for a larger image.

Somewhere on the Mid Cheshire line this morning; a lightly-loaded class 142 Pacer unit making for an easy journey as far as my passenger counting is concerned

The Pacer at Chester General station....

....And later this afternoon, a similar unit at Manchester Piccadilly station, photographed just before we met up for the tour of the Signalling Centre

After signing in and getting our identity badges, the first port of call was the announcement room. Most of the announcements for train departures etc. are automatic, but the operator (in the blue shirt) can manually select on his PC screen any announcement he wants the system to broadcast, or he can make manual announcements using a microphone.

The Station Manager explains how the system works

Maps of the railway layout, with the position of trains on it, can be displayed so that announcers can update themselves on whether services are running to time. The trains are the boxes on the tracks with 4 character identification codes in them (e.g.1V29) and their position on the map represents the actual train's location on the railway. This is a map of the Piccadilly Station area, though maps of any part of the rail system can be called up to be displayed.

A closer look at the Announcer's position. On the screen is a scrollable list of announcements, which will run automatically triggered by the running of trains, or can be highlighted by the Announcer to be broadcast immediately. On the back wall are screens which cycle through the pictures from the many CCTV cameras around the station.

From the Announcing area we moved through to the Piccadilly Signalling Centre. Shift Manager Allan Lewis is seen explaining the Centre's operations to our group.

  The signallers have a display on the wall of the area the box controls. That area stretches from Piccadilly Station to Heaton Norris Junction (just short of Stockport), and to just short of Wilmslow via the Styal line including Manchester Airport station, and through to the lines out to Salford and Liverpool in the other direction. Stockport is still manually signalled from the boxes there, but the entire area will soon be swept into a single signalling centre which will control the railway from Scotland as far south as Stafford.

Using these buttons on the desk, signallers manually select routes for the trains. Trains are identified on the display by a 4-character route indicator code such as '1V69'. Signallers press a button to select the 'entry' into a section, and a second button to select the exit, together with any alternate route selections within the section which are set on the black knobs. If it is safe to allow the train into the section (i.e. it is not a movement that will conflict with a route already set) then all the appropriate points will change and the signals will set to allow the train to enter.

A closer look at the route select buttons and knobs. Note the red 'thimble'... this is the equivalent to 'stop blocks' one puts on signal levers in a conventional 'box to remind the signaller not to set up a particular route (for instance if there is a known rail fault to be avoided). These 'thimbles' are simply placed over the appropriate button as a reminder and to physically prevent it being operated.

Our tour also included visits to many non-public areas of the station, particularly in the undercroft. Here the old brick arches of the original station construction can be seen.

It's obvious that the Piccadilly Signalling Centre, although light years ahead of  my manual 'box at Consall on the Churnet Valley Railway, is actually pretty old technology. One can see how, with today's technology, routes could be automatically set according to the trains' route indicator codes with no need for human intervention except in the event of a failure. Such technology is presumably what will enable this centre, as well as many others such as Crewe, Manchester South (located on the site of the old Stockport Motive Power Depot), and those manual boxes in Stockport to be integrated in one fully automatic Centre. Indeed there is no reason why the entire UK rail system couldn't be signalled from one control centre and no doubt one day it will be, but not for a while yet. Here's an article from Rail News about the technology that will replace Piccadilly Signalling Centre:

NETWORK RAIL has unveiled plans to close nearly all the 800 signalling centres, panels and boxes which presently control the National Rail network, replacing them with 14 Rail Operating Centres and reducing the signalling workforce by two-thirds, to 2,000.

The changeover will take more than two decades to complete and cost some £1.1 billion.
However, it is expected that the annual savings will amount to at least £200 million by 2030, when 80 per cent of the project should be complete, and £250 million by the 2040s.

Some ROCs will control an entire Network Rail route so that, for example, Didcot ROC will regulate the entire Great Western network in England, from Penzance to Bristol and Paddington, and as far north as the outskirts of Birmingham, where Saltley ROC would take over.

The West Coast Main Line will be run by just four ROCs -- Glasgow (Cowlairs), Manchester, Saltley and Rugby, while East Anglia will be controlled from a new ROC at Romford. The largest ROC will be at York, which will cover north east England from The Wash to the Scottish borders, and also all the East Coast Main Line in England.

Wales will be run by a single ROC at Cardiff, and Scotland by two -- at Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Network Rail says train regulation will become more efficient, thanks to new traffic management and control systems which will improve capacity.

The changes will also be compatible with the spread of ERTMS, because the equipment in the new ROCs will be 'agnostic' about the signalling systems to which they are connected, and in the case of ERTMS will link directly with its layer of train control functions.

But it will be the end of the line for the remaining mechanical boxes and their associated semaphore signals, which will be replaced by modular signals.

After the tour I caught a train home, thinking of its progress across the display on the Signalling Centre wall... and thankful to have seen an era of signalling on the railway which will soon seem as out of date as my manual signal box at Consall does today.

Thanks Adrian for organising such an enjoyable and informative outing.

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