Barking signal cabin

Barking
FF
Overview
Opened	30 March 1960
Closed	18 March 2023
Operator	London Underground

Barking (prefix FF) is a signal cabin close to the station of the same name on London Undergrounds' District and Hammersmith & City lines of the Sub-Surface Railway (SSR). Opened in 1960, it closed in 2023 under the Four Lines Modernisation (4LM) re-signalling programme.

District Railway

Whilst there had been a station at Barking since 1854 opened by the London Tilbury & Southend Railway (LTSR), it would take until 1902 for the District Railway (DR) to extend this far into East London by means of the Whitechapel & Bow Railway, a joint venture between the DR and LTSR. DR services were temporarily truncated one stop short of Barking at East Ham between 1905 and 1908 whilst quadrupling of the railway between Gas Factory Junction (near Bromley-by-Bow) and Barking could take place. This would give the DR a dedicated pair of tracks to Barking which were also electrified at the same time.

Due to the shared running agreement between the DR and LTSR, infrastructure such as stations and signalling was predominantly the responsibility of the LTSR which was incorporated into the London, Midland and Scottish Railway from 1923 and the eastern region of British Railways from 1947.

London Transport and British Railways

With the DR becoming the District line in 1933 with the formation of London Transport (LT) and Metropolitan line services reaching Barking in 1936, this marked a significant increase in the levels of traffic in the Barking area. The LTSR station was now a major bottleneck for British Railways with the convergence of six passenger routes and substantial goods traffic from Dagenham and Tilbury docks. Between 1959 and 1961 the railway around Barking was reconstructed in phases to enable grade separation between the former LTSR routes, the Gospel Oak to Barking line as well the District and Metropolitan lines. Barking station itself was also rebuilt with the concrete modernist ticket hall designed by H.H Powell that fronts the station today.

The current signal cabin opened on 30 March 1960 in conjunction with wholesale re-signalling of the railway between Bromley-by-Bow and Upminster. This replaced semaphore signals as well as LMS variable block signalling controlled over three LMS-era signal boxes at Barking East, Barking West and Barking Sidings. By 11 September 1960, Barking had absorbed control of the railway between Dagenham East and Bromley-by-Bow. In keeping with the shared running agreement originally agreed by the DR and LTSR, the signal cabin was a combined facility crewed by both British Railways and London Transport signallers. The signal cabin was fitted with a pair of Westinghouse push button desks reflecting the intensity of traffic in this area as well as large geographic coverage. The implementation of push button desks by Westinghouse would mark the last evolutionary phase of signal cabins which had seen close to a century of continuous development since the Metropolitan Railway opened in 1863. The advent of automated programme machines coupled with push button desks would eventually give rise to the large amphitheatre-style control rooms such as Earl’s Court (opened 1966) which continue to be the staple design for railway control rooms.

1962 saw the final BR services calling at intermediate stations between West Ham, Barking and Upminster withdrawn and transferred ownership of those stations to LT in 1969. The opening of Upminster Integrated Electronic Control Centre (IECC) in 1995 saw Barking relinquish control of the London Tilbury & Southend routes now operated by c2c as well the Gospel Oak to Barking line and the signal cabin became become an exclusively London Underground staffed facility. It was in this form that the signal cabin operated in up until closure.

Four Lines Modernisation (4LM)

It was the introduction of the S8 and S7 stocks between 2010 and 2015 that was to prove the catalyst for wholesale re-signalling of the SSR. Bombardier, manufacturers of the S stock trains were also contracted to replace the legacy fixed-block signalling with Distance To Go Radio (DTGR), a form of Automatic Train Operation (ATO). The re-signalling was to be known as the Sub-Surface Upgrade Programme (SSUG). However, Bombardier’s inexperience in delivering signalling systems soon started to drag the SSUG behind schedule and faced with mounting costs and delays, London Underground terminated the contract in 2013 at an estimated cost of £900m and a completion date delay of five years.

Thales won the re-tendered contract for SSR re-signalling in 2015 which had been renamed as Four Lines Modernisation (4LM). Thales would introduce Communications Based Train Control (CBTC), a variant of SelTrac ATO. Migration to ATO on the SSR is split into 14 Signal Migration Areas (SMA) of with Barking's area of control between Bromley-by-Bow and Dagenham East falling within in SMAs 6 and 7. On 15 January 2023, SMA 6 was commissioned extending CBTC operation from Stepney Green to Becontree and closing majority of the signal cabin with the exception of the Dagenham East area. This interim setup ended on 18 March 2023 when SMA 7 (Becontree - Upminster) was brought into use thus ending the signal cabins 63 years of operational use.