PHOTO GALLERY: NORTH EASTERN RAILWAY

Picton

OPENED: c1873 CLOSED: 1997

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Picton was once a significant junction on the Northallerton to Stockton route, as the main route to Whitby once branched off here. For many years, though, Whitby trains have used a different route, causing the importance of this location to diminish.

The box here opened around 1873, and was built by the Central Division of the North Eastern Railway. In original form, the box was rather smaller, and would have looked very much like Cargo Fleet Road.

However, in 1905, a significant expansion in the layout here necessitated the installation of a much larger lever frame. A substantial rebuild of the box was carried out in order to accommodate this. So drastic was this rebuild, that there is little to give this fact away – the usual clues of different colour brickwork or an unbalanced window arrangement are not present.

This rebuilding occurred after the Central Division lost its identity, and therefore shows some features of the Southern Division boxes of the time – notably the arched locking-room windows (some of which show signs of later removal) and the shallower roof. These features can be compared with Rigton.

In much more recent years, the McKenzie & Holland frame was shortened to just 26 levers as most of the levers had become redundant. The box had become little more than a wayside block post with level crossing. But the track diagram was enormous, because working was Track Circuit Block between here and the adjacent boxes which were some distance away.

The wooden level crossing gates were worked from a “ships wheel” at the end of the lever frame.

The line was re-signalled in 1997, and the box closed on 29th of November that year.