The three signal boxes in these four images were part of a collection of some of the finest Modern architecture of post-War Britain. That one was at Hackney Downs (three of the four brick facades have been ruined by the cretinous train operating company spraying them with paint in their corporate colours. Bloody vandals).
Whereas this one (above and below) is at Harlow Mill, a few miles north of Harlow New Town. Architecturally I think this is the finest of the three, the symmetrical placing of the glazed cabin creating a rather marvellous streamlined feel.
They're all disused now, of course, replaced by powerboxes miles away where controllers work as part of a team in a darkened room filled with computer screens.
But some of them are now being listed as important buildings in their own right.
Not, alas, that last one, at Broxbourne, where the adjacent station was recently listed.
I'll be returning shortly to the outpourings of the Eastern Region architect's department -- an extraordinary oasis of Modernism in a post-War desert of mock-Georgian Britain.
3 comments:
I could concur with "INTERESTING" but would hate to see too many such in what is still (mainly) a lovely country. Just imagine placing one of those at Adlestrop! I can't accuse them of not disclosing their role, but don't you think they are rather hard and brutal compared with, say, that fine box at Shrewsbury?
"Hard and brutal"? No, not at all. There's something delightful (and often twee) about Victorian and Edwardian signal-boxes, but only a culture that was completely dead would slavishly copy the styles of its predecessors.
We live in a modern world, and our architecture should reflect our technologies, our values and our aesthetics (I'm ignoring for the purposes of this argument the need sometimes to build in a particular style in order not to unbalance a specific group of heritage buildings).
I think the three signal-boxes here are works of genius, reflecting the hope and optimism of the end of the 1950s/beginning of the 1960s. They are fit for purpose, and designed with the intention of communicating modernity and speed and efficiency (all qualities the railways were desperately short of at that time): they add to their context rather than subtracting.
They use good materials particularly well (which makes it all the more infuriating that someone has painted the brick at Hackney Downs -- the honesty of the materials, and the contrast between them within the composition, is a key part of their aesthetic).
I suspect you're not going to like a post I've got coming up in a day or so, featuring some of the glorious Modernist stations that were built at the same time as these signal boxes...
I want to take sides with LeDuc. Having grown up in the seventies, for me there is a beauty in some of the modern buildings (e.g. http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/31697502.jpg; if you trust the link; it's not mine!). In the book 'Image de Trains Tome V' i've found a lovely photograph of a french steam loco 141R passing by the newly constructed modern concrete signal box of Persan-Beaumont; it all fits together in the photograph for me.
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