ABSTRACT

Accommodating equipment for controlling train movements, railway signal boxes are surviving representatives of functional buildings, a building category emerging during the Industrial Revolution specifically for occupation in support of an industrial process rather than occupied by people. Industrial Revolution buildings areindustrial heritage and there are issues concerning heritage authenticity in presenting these buildings, with diverse groups of people having different perceptions of the buildings. This research aims to identify varying perceptions of heritage functional buildings as a means of developing an effective conservation strategy by a research methodology of creating an original taxonomical model and applying this to a sample range of British signal boxes to determine representative signal box taxonomies and seeing these taxonomical findings in the railway landscape context. Findings, using this contextual data, are that skills and varying individual knowledge relative to signal boxes are specific and divergent. Conclusions are that context provided by the taxonomical model developed in this research determines the effectiveness of signal box conservation, this model is internationally applicable to functional buildings from the Industrial Revolution, and relevancy supports interpretation. Conservation policies must recognise these issues and understand the motivations where custodians, whether owners or conservators, make decisions concerning heritage functional buildings.

摘要

铁路信号箱是控制火车运行的适应性设备，是功能性建筑的代表。工业革命期间出现的一种建筑类别，专门用于支持工业过程而不是被人占用。工业革命建筑物是工业遗产，在介绍这些建筑物时会遇到与遗产真实性有关的问题，不同的人群对建筑物有不同的认识。这项研究旨在通过创建原始分类学模型并将其应用于英国信号盒的样本范围中以确定代表性信号盒分类法的研究方法，来识别对遗产功能性建筑的不同看法，以制定有效的保护策略。铁路景观背景下的分类学发现。使用此上下文数据得出的结论是，与信号盒相关的技能和变化的个人知识是特定且不同的。结论是，由本研究开发的分类模型提供的上下文确定了信号盒保护的有效性，该模型在国际上适用于工业革命后的功能性建筑物，并且相关性支持解释。