Tuesday, April 26, 2016

A trip to Switzerland in 1988: Chur to Davos

Deutsche Version dieses Postings

The next 20 or so postings will show about 400 pictures from Switzerland that I took on a trip to Switzerland in August 1988. As always, my main focus was on signal boxes and signals, but of course I also shot some locos and cars at times—although the latter pictures are sort of "drive-by-shootings." Still, maybe someone is interested in one or two of them.

We started the fortnight-long trip at Chur, where I took this cut-off picture of a train of the Rhätische Bahn to Arosa:

RhB train to Arosa, lead by control car 1703, Chur, 13.8.1988

Symmetric three-way points vanished from standard gauge railways around 1900, on narrow gauge lines they were used longer. Swiss narrow gauge lines had (and have?) quite a number of them—here is one that I photographed at Chur:

Symmetric three-way points, RhB, Chur, 13.8.1988

Symmetric three-way points, RhB, Chur, 13.8.1988

From Chur, we continued to Davos:

RhB multiple-unit train, near Landquart, 13.8.1988

RhB 626, Landquart, 13.8.1988

Upwards, 13.8.1988

Our first stay was at Davos:

Cat, Davos Platz, 13.8.1988

Train indicator, Davos Platz, 13.8.1988

Here are the first two, quite ad-hoc pictures of interlocking apparatus:

Signal buttons on platform, Davos Platz, 13.8.1988

Part of interlocking panel, Davos Platz, 13.8.1988

It seems we took a short trip to Klosters and back in the evening:

RhB 626, Klosters, 13.8.1988

Distant signal, Klosters, 13.8.1988

The RhB had introduced centralized traffic control of longer stretches of its lines from important stations. Here is the signalling panel at Klosters:

Interlocking panel, Klosters, 13.8.1988

The layout of the line is reminiscent of American CTC of single-track lines with single loop tracks at each station:

Interlocking panel, Klosters, 13.8.1988

As a rule, traffic was routed automatically. And the RhB had no problem with single starting signals for both tracks at all stations:

Interlocking panel, Klosters, 13.8.1988

At Cavadürli, between Klosters and Davos, the old bells had survived:

Bells, Cavadürli, 13.8.1988

No comments:

Post a Comment