Related to this, is there anywhere a handy guide to which boxes control which sections of line? I used to know all the boxes on the WCML off by heart, but they've changed it all so much lately I don'[t know where anything is now.
The signalling record society produce an atlas of the UK, called Signalling Atlas and Signal Box Directory: Great Britain and Ireland. The Quail maps also have signalboxes and control boundaries on them.
Most people that have any sort of interest in signalling (and I'll accept not all enthusiast share this) you tend to pick up the codes over time travelling about and so on.
Finally on the term 'signal box', it's rather outdated and somewhat misleading, conjuring up images of shiny brass and levers and hard manual work. I've been occasionally amazed even some enthusiasts think this is 'the norm', rather than the increasingly 'office like' environment on modern signalling centres - which are just rows of desks with VDUS. For all intents and purposes much like any other office or control centre, which can be housed anywhere from station buildings to industrial estates.
Like control centres for other utilities, radio stations, TV stations, some can be in otherwise anonymous buildings. For example in those offices high above Baker street station house the control rooms for underground lines like the Bakerloo line. Very people know they are there, and you can walk through endless corridors, just like any other office block, except one of two rooms are house the control centres. LUL, Coburg street control and Liverpool Street IECC are even worse, you could walk by those buildings everyday and not know what they are. Swindon B IECC is nearly impossible to spot unless you know what you are looking for, and York IECC is just that big building behind the station that most people probably think is just a store or office block, yet it's the nerve centre for Yorkshire.
