An extensive industrial spur at Salez-Sennwald, 1991

Deutsche Version dieses Postings

And here are the last pictures I ever made of Swiss interlockings.

Salez-Sennwald had colour-light signals and electrified points, but the interlocking frame itself was still the old Jüdel one from 1906—albeit with a lot of changes we'll see in a moment:

Factory sign Max Jüdel from 1906, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

The station was and still is interesting, because there is a longer industrial spur with a few large shippers, one of them a large tank farm. Originally, that track was built for the company "Rheinkies" (which translates as "Rhine gravel", with an obvious business purpose), and therefore the track had been given the name "Rheinkies-Gleis", which was also used on the interlocking ("Rhine gravel spur"). Later, a crude oil pipeline was built from Genoa at the Mediterranean to Ingolstadt in Germany, and in the 1970s, a refinery was planned at this location. As a first step, the tank farm was erected, as well as a small destillery for heating oil. Fortunately, the refinery was never built, but a six-track loading yard was built for the tank farm and the destillery. On the internet, there are some interesting pictures, e.g. this one of the destillery, this aerial image of the complete farm, and then this futuristic vision of the refinery.

The interlocking frame at Salez-Sennwald was located in a small building next to the station building proper:

Signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

The narrow room did not allow a single picture of the complete frame—you must reconstruct it from he following images.

Through the door, one can see the route levers and the track occupancy indicators, with the track and signal panel above:

Route levers, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

Here is a closer look of these parts:

Route levers and track panel, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

The following pictures show some enlarged details. The route levers allowed the following routes:

• track 2 | arrival from Haag-Gams | track 3
• track 1 dep. to Haag-Gams | arr. from Rheinkies spur into track 3/5
• track 2 | departure to Haag-Gams | track 3
• track 2 | departure to Rüthi | track 3
• track 1 | departure to Rüthi
• track 2 | arrival from Rüthi | track 3

Three items are worth of notice:

• As usual in Switzerland, where were signalled departure routes from the loading/shed track (track 1, in this case). 
• But also the arrival from the Rheinkies spur is a full-fledged route on the interlocking. If one looks closely, one can see that the incsription on the second route lever mentions a "signal E", so it looks as if there was a separate home signal on the spur in earlier times.
• Above the route levers, one can see the mechanical track occupancy indicator that was typical for Switzerland (and Bavaria); it worked by simply counting each release of an arriving route as "occupying", and each release of a departure route as "clearing the respective track", with obvious problems with shunting moves (which made other railway administrations shun this sort of apparatus):

Route levers, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

Here is the track and signal panel. As usual, we can see grouped starting signals as well as home signals with distant signals for the starting signals (these distant signals were called "through signsls" in Switzerland). At the Rheinkies spur, which enters the yard from the lower right, one can see a shunting signal called V_E ...

Track and signal panel, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

... but on closed look, one can see that at earlier times, two more lamps were mounted here: Thus, it seems that this was actually once a stop signal that protected the yard from arrivals on the Rheinkies spur:

Track and signal panel, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

Above the route levers is the line block operation panel, which also includes barrier controls. On some braces in the back, the timetable with track occupancies is mounted, and in the back one can see the graphical timetables of this single-track railway line:

Line block panel and timetables, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

On the left side, there were the levers for points 1 and 2, the latter leading into the loading track. As at Heerbrugg, also here the wire lines had been replaced with brake bands after the installation of electri points motors. Near the points levers, there is the reversible signal lever for home signal A and then the lever for starting signal B (which probably was a single-arm signal before electrified, because there is no reversal lever on it). Quite a bit behind the levers are the electrical lever locks:

Left side of lever frame, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

The next picture shows the right side of thelever frame. At the wall, one can see the track plan of the Rheinkies spur and, above it, the yard at the tank farm. Below it, there are the points and signal levers:

• On the left is the lever for starting signal C, 
• then a reversible lever for home signal D 
• a finally a lever for the home signal from the Rheinkies spur, with inscription "Einfahrt von Rheinkies-Gleis auf Gleis 3/5 - E", i.e., "Arrival from Rheinkies spur on track 3/5 - E".

Also on this side, one cann see the lever locks behind all levers:

Right side of lever frame, signal box, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

Outside, I took a photo of the station building and the small signal box under a clear blue sky:

Station building, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

And finally, here are two pictures of the dual system (diesel engine as well as electrical motor) shunting engine Tem" 342, which was used for handling the traffic on the industrial spurs:

Traktor Tem" 342, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

Traktor Tem" 342, Salez-Sennwald, spring 1991

This is the end of my pictures of Swiss interlockings. I visited Switzerland much too seldom, but, well, so it goes. Much more, and more substantiated, information about Swiss interlockings can be found in Hans G. Wägli's comprehensive bool Hebel, Riegel und Signale, which I reviewed in a short posting earlier.