A semaphore and its distant disc signal, and a vexing command frame at St.Margethen, 1991

German version of this posting

At some time in the spring of 1991 (I don't know the precise date) I made a short trip to Switzerland, to document the interlockings of four stations near the Austrian border.

The first one I visited was St.Margrethen. At the line from Austria, coming over the river Rhine from Lustenau, St.Margrethen still had mechanical signals—a disc distant signal and a semaphore as home signal:

Distant signal from Lustenau, St.Margrethen, spring 1991

Home signal from Lustenau, St.Margrethen, spring 1991

As far as I can remember, the station was empty of people—there was no-one I could ask about the signal boxes (called "posts" in Switzerland). Therefore, and unfortunately, I did not visit them. I took a first photo, with deep shadows, of three locomotives:

Swiss Ae 4/7, Swiss Re 6/6 and an Austrian 4030, St.Margrethen, 1991

Then I took photos of the command frame, an interesting and vexing piece of machinery. You may look at the entry about St.Margethen on the website www.gleisplaene-schweiz.ch: There you can see the track plan, as well as diagrams of the interlockings as of 1981. In 1991, the shunting signals had been removed, hence there was only a single lever on the command frame. Here is a first picture of it:

Command frame, St.Margrethen, spring 1991

On the following picture, ony can see a locking bed on the left of the frame. It is unclear whether any route or other locking bars were present in it at that time:

Command frame, St.Margrethen, spring 1991

Here is a more detailed photograph:

Command frame, St.Margrethen, spring 1991

I am not really sure what the purposes of the various levers are. Here is a risky list of guesses (I'll show enlargements of the inscriptions below):

• On the very right, there is a unique stepping lever with (I think) seven positions, marked "Fahrstrassen-Freigabe" = "route release". The routes are primarily entry routes from all three directions (Lustenau, Au, Rheineck), but also departure routes towards Au. The entry routes from Rheineck into tracks 4 and 5 are erased, for whatever reason. Interesting: There is an departure route towards Au out of tracks "A II-V", but also another one from tracks "A V/VI": The latter one gores over the connection in the middle of the tracks—there is no other way to reach Au from track 6.
• The next two levers on the left list exactly the same routes, but with some more detail. The levers might have been be signal levers—but they are definitely green, i.e., route levers; and there was also the large lever F1/2, which, on the left, is connected to the home signal from Rheineck. The levers might have been interlocked with shunting signal levers; but also then it is unclear why there is this seven-position lever on the very right—which, it seems to me, restricts the whole station to a single signalled train route at a time ...
• The next lever to the left is now a simple, single route lever for train routes from Lustenau in Austria. It releases the signals at post 1, i.e., the semaphore and the disc signal. The plan shows, above this lever, a lever lock inscribed "Achskont.", i.e., axle control. This could be one of the few track-circuited points on this side of the station; but why would one check for occupied points when releasing the route at the command frame?
The plan at gleisplaene-schweiz.ch also shows that the semaphore was cleared with a Jüdel double lever, with a reversing pulley at the front—this must have been the last lever of this type in all of the world ... and I missed it. Well, so it goes.
• The leftmost lever is the signal lever from Rheineck. Looking like a true semaphore lever, including the wire vanishing below the frame, it actually clears a colour-light signal. The wire, obviously, is only wound around some braking pulley below, without any more mechanical linkages.

Here are, for completeness, images of all the lever inscriptions, from the right to the left:

Rightmost lever, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Inscription on rightmost lever, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Route release lever for routes from Rheineck, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Route release lever for routes from and to Au, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Route release lever for routes from Lustenau, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Signal lever F1/2 for home signal from Rheineck, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

Inscription at signal lever F1/2, command frame St.Margrethen, Frünjahr 1991

And that's it from this interesting, and long gone, apparatus. ... no, it's not: There is an additional posting with lots of interesting information by Stefan Niklaus!