Sunday, March 8, 2020

Another electro-mechanical frame in Italy: Macerata, 1990

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I took only one photograph of the frame at Macerata:

Electro-mechanical frame, Macerata, May 1990

The following two enlargements show a few more details. The levers on the frame are pretty self-explanatory, with the exception of the rightmost one, which should probably be yellow—controlling the distant signal on the Civitanova side; and the light-grey one in the middle, which probably controlled the points visible on the track plan above the starting signal towards Civitanova. The track occupance was shown in the old way, with non-occupied tracks being lighted, and occupied tracks, as well as tracks without track circuits, shown dark—see also the frame at Ciampino:

Electro-mechanical frame, Macerata, May 1990

Track plan, Macerata, May 1990

Outside, I took two more photos of the ubiquitous Fiat rail cars used on those secondary lines:

ALn668 1403, Macerata, May 1990

ALn668 1480, Macerata, May 1990

On our way back to Foligno, I took a last picture of a locomotive, probably at Fabriano:

E646 037, Fabriano(?), May 1990

2 comments:

  1. The light gray lever is actually a faded sky-blue lever controlling some level crossing barriers.

    Black for points and point lockers, sky blue for level crossings, dark blue for route locking (basically it sums the position of other levers and/or electric permissions granted by other signalboxes), red for main signals, yellow for distant signals, purple for shunting signals and possibly shunting route locking, green to grant electric permission to other signalboxes (it sums the position of other levers much like dark blue ones do), brown to enable/disable the whole lever frame (leaving it in a well-known setting): when in the disabled position a key could be removed therefore ensuring that everything is immovable and set as expected.

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  2. Hi, the rightmost lever should be indeed yellow, the one you see as gray is actually a very pale sky-blue and controls a level crossing, black levers are for points or point locks, blue levers are for routes and could be moved only when all other required levers are set accordingly (and in turn they unlock signal levers). In addition there could be purple levers for shunting signals (and sometimes for locking shunting routes akin to blue levers), green levers to send electric unlocking signals for levers in other signal boxes in large installations, and at most one brown lever to lock and exclude the whole signal box during off-hours.

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