Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Semaphores at Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Deutsche Version dieses Postings

This and a few following postings have recent photos in them—taken in July 2020! ... maybe more interesting for some of you than my historical ones.

In the first day of July, I finally paid visits to a few Bavarian stations in my vicinity which are still fully equipped with semaphores. At some places, I only took photos of the signals, at others, I was allowed a peek, and some photos, in the signal box. I will not add too much text in these postings, rather, just show the pictures.

My first stop was at Bad Reichenhall, at the single-track line from Freilassing to Berchtesgaden in southernmost Bavaria.

In earlier times, there were four signalled tracks here, but the second one has been removed. Here are the starting signals on the south end, towards Berchtesgaden:

Starting signals N1, N3 and N4 and corresponding shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Starting signals N1, N3 and N4 with shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020


At the foot of the signals, one can see the typical Bavarian combined drives for a stop signal as well as the shunting signal before it. Up to the 1920s, the Bavarian Railways used special signals with an dropping arm for "shunting allowed". When these were replaced with standard German signals in the 1930s and 1940s, it seems that the width of the wire-line ducts could not be easily extended, so these combined drives were used at many places. I'll show levers for such a drive in a later posting about Berchtesgaden.

Shunting signal 1lll, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Drives of starting signals N3 and N4 with their shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Starting signals N3 and N4 with their shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Starting signals N3 and N4 with their shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Here are a few more details:

Wire-line into signal drive at starting signal N3, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Signal drive of starting signal N4 and its shunting signal, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

All the starting signals have electrical signal arm clutches, as is required for lines with line blocking:

Signal drives and electrical signal arm clutches of starting signals N3 and N4 and their shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Here are the starting signals at the opposite, northern end. In front of P4 and P3, there are shunting signals, but starting signal P1 in the background does not have one:

Starting signals P4, P3 and P1 and shunting signals, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

These signals have separate electrical drives. The signal arm clutch is integrated in their housing:

Shunting signal 4l, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Drives of starting signal P4 and shunting signal 4l, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Drives of von starting signal P3 and shunting signal 3l, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Far outside ths station, we can see here distant signal Vf, which can only show Vr0 (stop expected) and Vr2 (slow expected):

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Berchtesgaden, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Berchtesgaden, July 2020

Instead of lamps, this modernized disc signal has LEDs for the night indications, whose power supply is supported by solar cells:

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

Distant signal Vf, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020


Here is a short video of the signal changing aspects right before a train:


And here is a last picture of the track near the distant signal:

Steel ties, Bad Reichenhall, July 2020

No comments:

Post a Comment