On Saturday, May 13, 2023, the training signal box was reopened during a celebration with presentations in a small circle of invited experts. During the low-visitor Corona period, the facility for demonstrating control and safety technology was thoroughly overhauled and expanded both visually and technically by eight volunteers in 4000 working hours. The refurbishment lasted from November 2019 to April 2023.
The functioning of a mechanical signal box as a technically descriptive device for setting points and securing train operation has existed in the museum since 1978. The installation was first extended in 1990. Since then, many museum visitors have been able to have the securing technology and functioning of a signal box explained to them by expert museum personnel at special events. The combination and interdependence of original signal box equipment with a model railway layout can probably be described as unique in the whole of Germany. And large and small visitors were always very impressed by the vividness of the system.
According to original circuit specifications, a so-called track block device has now been added and a fully automatic station has been developed as a block counter station. When the large switch levers are set, the model trains move impressively from station to station according to the safety devices of the prototype on a model railroad layout that has now been expanded and lovingly reworked. As a special highlight functions a camera installed in the model train, by means of which prototypical a locomotive driver from the neighboring room controls the train.As in a kind of simulator, he sees on a monitor the position of the signals and switches on the track in front of him..
In the future, the system is also to function for lectures at the TU Darmstadt. An initial trial run has already been successfully completed.
The layout will be shown to the general public again for the first time at the Bahnwelttage on Ascension Day and the following weekend.
