When the Great Northern & Great Eastern Joint line forged its
way north from Cambridge, through Spalding and Lincoln towards Doncaster in the
late 1870s and early 1880s, a cunning plan was conceived for crossing the wide
River Trent near Gainsborough. At their Gainsborough Lea Road station, the line
curved sharply left and joined the Great Central Railway's main Grimsby to
Manchester route. Travelling south-west for a short distance to cross the
Trent, it turned off again at the far side of the bridge to head northwards
again. Whilst this was no doubt officially to encourage interworking of
traffic, little of this happened in practice.
The boxes at each junction were known as East Trent Junction and West Trent Junction, but when the layout was centralised on one box the unusual name of Gainsborough Trent Junctions was adopted. That box was renewed in 1964 with the structure illustrated here.
Boxes of this era were rather austere, although the design was functional. This particular style was used between 1961 and 1964, after which the only full size mechanical box built by BR(E) was Twenty Feet River of 1974.
All of the boxes were roomy inside, and most of this type
contained frames manufactured by the Railway Signal Company. This particular
example appears to be a standard model (most were to the Great Northern Railway
of Ireland design, believed to be a cancelled order - see