The mechanical point run 

Excellent informative video , there was a 30 odd lever box very near my house and as I child I was fascinated by all the point rodding , cranks , and cast wheels chains and steel cables and how it all worked so found this video fascinating.

I seem to remember every point crank was made to engineers drawings to order in the same drawing set the points themselves were technically drawn so each crank etc could be swiftly made up by one of the metal firms used. I remember fondly me old man when I went in to Sole Street signalbox with him one winter, he used to have on the stove buckets of oil he would be heating up and that he would trudge up and down his track washing the point motors and arms with hot oil to stave off the ice. He only ever did that on nights where he could set all signals to red then off he would plod smelling like an engine sump lol Sole St had two sidings, one on the ticket side station which had a Wickham trolley and the longer cripple siding by the box on the down side, neither were clipped and padlocked so had to be kept maintained and didn't have point motor warmers back then.

Excellent video. New Zealand Railways used exclusively McKenzie & Holland (Worcester made up to the 1920s after which we used Melbourne made gear) mechanical equipment which used escapement cranks to drive the switchblades. Point lever movement always started with unlocking the blades in the first 25%, moving the blades in the next 50% then locking the blades in the last 25%. FPLs and lockbars were also used. The result was that once the point lever was fully normal or reverse, there was no compression or tension on the whole rodding run. The only rod in compression or tension was the short drive rod from the escapement crank to the points themselves, about 7 feet worth. There was very little wear on the cranks, jaws and pins. I am not aware of any interlockings after about 1910 which did not use an escapement crank. All point rodding is pipe because it rarely wore out. I have never seen channel rodding in NZ. This is in contrast to our Australian neighbours which did not use escapements. The first time I pulled a set of mechanical points in Australia, I was surprised that the lever popped out of the normal notch when I grabbed the catch handle. This was in total contrast to New Zealand point levers where the first 25% of relatively free travel, gave you the momentum to throw the points with ease. It is interesting to note that lever catch handle spring boxes in the Australian state of Victoria, which is also exclusively McKenzie & Holland, Melbourne pattern, have been replaced by VR (Victorian Railways) strengthened cast steel boxes. I was told that this was after an incident where a derailment on the track put so much pressure on the rodding run that the lever in the box broke the catch handle box and the lever shot to reverse, just as the signalman walked past to see what the racket was outside. The poor person was severely injured by being hit in the hip by the flying lever. Thank you for your good work making these videos!

amazing how a simple mechanical device did what now takes a couple of computers to do.

Very interesting stuff. Stockport was and is a very complicated mechanical set up!

I always knew the running rails expanded but the points rods would as well, needing allowance the same!! 🧐

A great video although you do tend to mix Fouling bars with Locking Bars 😂