Rail operating centre

A rail operating centre (ROC) is a building that houses all signallers, signalling equipment, ancillaries and operators for a specific region or route on the United Kingdom's main rail network. The ROC supplants the work of several other signal boxes which have thus become redundant.

Network Rail announced the creation of fourteen ROCs situated throughout Great Britain that will control all railway signalling over the British National Rail network. This was subsequently revised to twelve ROCs with responsibilities at two (Saltley and Ashford) being transferred to other ROCs (Rugby and Gillingham respectively).

In November 2016, Network Rail announced that the ROC at Edinburgh would not go into operation with all its functions and responsibilities being transferred to Cowlairs in Glasgow.

Nationally this has meant the redundancy of eight hundred mechanical-lever signal boxes and around two hundred panel and IECC boxes. Some are listed buildings and will be left in situ.

The ROCs are built under private contracts for Network Rail, and will only control the rail routes controlled by Network Rail. Railways in Northern Ireland, various heritage railways and other tramways are not subject to control by a ROC. Ashford IECC still controls the UK stretch of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (HS1/CTRL), which is owned by London and Continental Railways and not Network Rail.

The ROCs function as signalling and control centres with signalling staff, train operating company (TOC) staff and Network Rail controllers all working under one roof. This is meant to enable quick solutions to signalling problems and fewer delays to trains and passengers. Network Rail envisage the twelve ROCs to be controlling the entire network by 2058.

Originally, the early railways employed 'policemen' to time the intervals between trains and to give a 'stop' signal if a train had passed in the previous ten minutes. Developments led to many everyday workings (such as interlocking points) and signal boxes to house the levers that allowed signallers to change the points and signals over a given stretch of railway. These signalboxes were often elevated above the railway due to the locking mechanisms of the signals and points being accommodated on the lower storey. This also allowed the signaller to keep an eye on things from a good vantage point.

At the end of the Second World War, the United Kingdom network was host to over ten thousand mechanical-lever signalboxes. When British Rail was created from the Big Four private railway companies under the Transport Act 1947, they began to install power signal boxes (PSB) at strategic locations such as Euston, Crewe, Doncaster, Rugby and Carlisle. The PSBs would remove the necessity for many individual boxes along a particular route and would pass control to one centralized location. Carlisle's PSB took over the responsibility of 44 signal boxes alone in the north west area.