Geograph - photograph every grid square

View from the north end of the box looking south. (See SP4640 : Interior view of Banbury North Signal Box (1) for a view the other way.) Taken during a tour of this signal box on Saturday 20th August. It closed for business at the start of August when major track rearrangement/renewals took place and new signals were installed, worked from the West Midlands Signalling Control Centre.

A local group had tried to get the box preserved, but both practical and financial problems have not allowed this. But so much interest, local and national, had arisen that Network Rail put off the demolition for 10 weeks, and tours of the box arranged. It was first thought that they might have 200-300 visitors - over 2,500 have now applied!

The tours stop on the 2nd October. Much of the interior equipment will be carefully stripped out and used to refurbish similar boxes in the Worcester area, or kept as spares. The box will be demolished on the 8th October 2016, some 117 years after it first opened to work a revised layout at Banbury - in just the same way the newly revised layout and signalling has caused its demise.