The North Eastern Railway built a number of these tall

boxes throughout their network usually in an effort to aid sighting for the signalmen. Indeed, this box once controlled an extensive number of sidings to the southwest as well as controlling access to the dye works that was located behind the box on the banks of the River Tyne. Today, the Type N1 box dating from 1872 controls just a small number of semaphores around the station from its forty-five lever frame much of which will now be redundant with a lot of white-painted levers (oou).