Compensating Signal Levers
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The station is protected by semaphore signals, trains approaching from the north are allowed access to the station by a Stevens & Son compensating signal lever dating from 1879 and operated by the station master from up platform beside Poulsom Park; this lever pulls a long cable which in addition to lowering the signal, some 500 yards from the site, to the “clear” position, also locks the points into position via a slide bar. It originates from the Manx Northern Railway who favoured this method of signalling; from 1905 when it was merged with the Isle of Man Railway equipment was moved to other stations.
The counterweight is known as “the cheese” and is designed to slide up and down the level for ease of use, the cable varying owing to warmer weather in the summer months. The signal which it operates is a lower quadrant with a red and white arm and integral lamp now powered by solar panel. A second such lever was in use for the southern end of the loop until 2012 when an original windlass was restored and installed to operate a replica slotted post signal. These were once prolific on the railway and today two examples remain at Ballasalla Station with a further example protecting Port Erin, now decommissioned.
Over the years these have appeared in a number of colour schemes, sometimes painted to match the scheme of invidual stations as has been the case at Castletown since 2025 when the Friends Of... volunteers repainted the remaining example into green and cream to suit its environs (as it had appeared some fifty years earlier). Latterly the handles were painted but these were originally burnished and kept polished, as our example is, though the handle at some point snapped and this is a replacement welded on at a later date.
The image to the right comes from Clive Emsley and shows the lever which operated the south signal (the structure in the background being The Sidings) with a familar permanent way locker behind it. This example was mounted on a row of sleepers to secure it and was removed for storage when the windlass replaced it in 2012. Note the counterweight sits correctly at the bottom of the lever, this sliding up the two white guides when the lever is pulled, so gravity allows the lever to drop once it passes vertical.
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