Highland Railway

Opened: 1898

Closed: 1987

Location code: Sc58/13

Inverness is a curiously laid out station - the lines from the north and south curve sharply to meet, side by side, at buffer stops. The two lines are linked by a curve from junctions just outside the station, and through trains have to use this line, then back into the platforms.

Rose Street box sat in the vee of the northern of the two junctions, facing the line to the north. A D53xx diesel can be seen in one of the platforms serving the "North Line".

The signal box is to the Highland Railway's own design, introduced around the turn of the century, which adopted many of the features of the earlier contractor's boxes (such as at Achnasheen) including the battened vertical boarding of the box.

The boxes at Inverness (including Rose Street) had one or two embellishments not found elsewhere - no doubt to attach a touch of grandeur at the only large station of the Highland Railway which was also the company's headquarters. These non-standard features include curved tops to the top row of windows and elegantly carved bargeboards.

The box was not always located here, it was moved a short distance in 1918 and fitted with a replacement 45 lever frame of McKenzie & Holland design when alterations to the layout were made.

By 1960, an additional lever had been added at the left-hand end of the frame, numbered (or rather lettered) "A".

Lever twenty controlled this splendid example of an elevated shunt signal which controlled departures from the Engine Shed. The signal is a standard McKenzie & Holland revolving disc shunting signal, modified so that the normally short swivelling post runs right up the centre of the main signal post.

This signal was the only revolving disc on the Highland lines to survive into recent years, and was almost certainly retained as a kind of working museum piece in view of its easily visible location. It was, no doubt, the pride of the local S&T department.

Unfortunately, when resignalling came in 1987, all of the signalling and signal boxes had to go.