I am delighted to say that in a substantial milestone for the project, we now have a replacement lever-frame for Hotchley Hill signalbox! The acquisition is an excellent match for the original LNER fitment, is in very good condition, and should just 'drop-in'. Untold time, energy and phone-calls went into making this happen, so I would like to say a personal "thank-you" to everyone involved.
That is now securely stored until we're ready for it - but to celebrate (and for the obligatory photograph) we took one lever down to Hotchley Hill, and tried bolting it in place. As if there had never been any doubt, it does fit, and we even managed to wedge one of the broken old quadrants under the catch.
Meanwhile, we took-on one of the last tasks on the windowframes before painting: Fitting bars across the more vulnerable panes upstairs. Stylistically, these are meant to echo the dozen or so sister boxes, all of which had glazing bars at 1/5 and 4/5 of the way up each window. Even the plans for H.H. show them. Practically, these will make it impossible to push the glazing into the building, short of ripping through M8 steel bolts.
Beside that, we drilled and test-fitted another frame, fabricated from steel strip to clamp the nameboard in place. This is harder than it looks, merely because the mounting holes in the wall don't line-up! Nevertheless, it fits and is ready for painting.
