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Miniature lever frames (and Doctor Who)

You are here: Home > Forum > Miscellaneous > The real thing (signalling) > Miniature lever frames (and Doctor Who)

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Miniature lever frames (and Doctor Who) 03/01/2013 at 19:12 #40115
Forest Pines
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525 posts
Hello there!

Feeling in the Christmas spirit the other day, we sat down to watch the Doctor Who special on the iPlayer. My partner started to regret it though, because before long I was freeze-framing and obsessing over details of the set design. The reason? The Tardis control panel apparently includes short chunk of miniature lever frame.

I eventually satisfied myself that BBC Cymru had borrowed a chunk of Genuine Railway Artefact to use, fora couple of reasons I''ll come on to. There were a couple of other things about it that puzzled me though, so I thought I'd bring it up with experts like you lot.

Firstly, the lever sequence. The lever order was: white, red, black, yellow, blue. It struck me as being a bit odd that a distant lever would be between a point and an FPL - or did those colours sometimes mean different things. Secondly, the presence of the FPL at all. One thing which made me think it probably is genuine was: in overhead shots you could see the catch handle notches in the quadrant plate (correct me if my terminology's off), and the black lever clearly had an extra notch in the check lock position as for a machine-operated point. But in that case why would it have an FPL lever separate? I can understand keeping a separate lever where a mechanical frame has had points converted to power working, but not on a miniature lever frame. On the other hand, a set designer making some stage levers isn't going to bother putting in an extra catch handle notch on something which is basically just a steampunk prop.

I'm half expecting someone to come along and say "oh, I volunteer at X and we loaned it to them" - or alternatively "it must be from Y Box cos it had exactly that arrangement". Or, of course, it might gave been repainted at some point (but in proper lever frame colours still). I am greatly intrigued.

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Miniature lever frames (and Doctor Who) 03/01/2013 at 21:05 #40131
Danny252
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1461 posts
Westinghouse power frame levers, said the grapevine.

The "grapevine" also included this terrible joke:
Quote:
I wonder if a TARDIS has Welwyn control (Emergency TIME Release)?

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Miniature lever frames (and Doctor Who) 03/01/2013 at 22:23 #40134
Forest Pines
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525 posts
" said:
Westinghouse power frame levers, said the grapevine.
That was what I thought also - sad that nobody has any more solid information!

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