forest city traffic light restoration GOT THEM WORKING

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horsetan
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Re: forest city traffic light restoration GOT THEM WORKING

Post by horsetan »

traffic-light-man wrote: Wed Nov 25, 2020 16:41..... It seems Manchester was (not surprisingly) a user of Forest City equipment, perhaps more so than a lot of other areas.

That's where I stumbled across these two photos. They very clearly show a 4-way type signal body (probably the most common of the survivors in the USA), as well as the single-face signal head and additional items, such as the distinctive HS finial, post-top slip fitter and the controller housing.

Image
Picture by Manchester Archives+, on Flickr

Image
Picture by Manchester Archives+, on Flickr

I married these up with the known marketing material from Forest City. Following some more digging, I located a (albeit pixelated) copy from an Eagle Signal brochure from 1930, shared by a fellow signal enthusiast in the US. It can just about be made out under "Foreign Representatives" is the line "England, Stretford, Manchester. The Forest City Electric Co. Ltd., 4 Longford Road."

Image

There was also a subsequent design change in HS signals, where the four retaining wing nuts for the lens 'port-hole' were replaced by two wing nuts opposing each other (top right and bottom left) and a pair of hinges on the right hand side, something which is also reflected in the Forest City marketing materials.This also gives a great indication of how that perhaps evolved in to the later design like the one Nick has restored, because in terms of the door assembly and sizing, it has definite echos of these earlier designs.

ImageForest City Automatic Traffic Signals, Manchester - advert c1930 by mikeyashworth, on Flickr

I haven't done too much digging beyond this at this stage, but it establishes why the signals are so similar. What's unusual is that the Eagle brochure above shows the new-at-the-time modular signals which don't appear to have made it to the UK. I'm making a huge assumption, but it strikes me as a possibility that Eagle/Harrington Seaberg either removed the license to manufacture or it stopped supplying parts to Forest City, and Forest City then established its own signal based on the last HS model used.

Image
Picture by Manchester Archives+, on Flickr

Image
Picture by Manchester Archives+, on Flickr....
The HS brackets and fastenings are incredibly over-ornate and cumbersome. If these were cast-iron, they must have been very heavy to lift.

The Forest City head is very much more compact-looking, with the measurements between the centres of each aspect being noticeably more compressed. I'd say they look very similar in that respect to the classic German signal head, the Siemens Silumin which more or less set the pattern for a great many Euro-standard heads since.
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