Mechanical Interlocking Museum Demonstartion

[Chen Melling]

12 hours ago, The Stationmaster said:

The railways in. palestine and Israel havea very complex history with regaugings (from narrow to stanradrd on some routes, new construction to stnadard fa gauge and some of teh narrow gauge left.  Originally French built and controlled the railways were run by the British during the Mandate period with lots of updating going on during that time plus they had been under British military controls at various stages during the two World Wars.

 

After 1948 and the effective partition of not only some of Palestines borders with neighbouring states but also within the country as Israeli and Arab dominated areas split and changed with routes vanishing or becoming divided.  Then to the modern IR  situation with massive modernisation and infrastructure improvement.

 

So there would have been early French operating practice succeeded by British Military Railway practice in places and then British management of. the network for over 20 years working to British practice but with a varied loco fleet.  It must be very interesting putting together museum exhibits reflecting that but from what we've seen in the is thread the interlocking seems more represeentative of British practice than any other

 

The first railway lines in then-Palestine - the French-owned Jaffa & Jerusalem and the Ottoman Government's Hijaz Railway - seem not to have had any fixed signalling. They seem to have relied instead on telegraphs. This allowed the incoming British forces to set their own standards on both new and existing lines. Later the Palestine Railways adapted the rule books of the Sudan Government Railway and the Egyptian State Railways to create their own. The drivers seem to have generally changed at the border stations until WW2, when military drivers had to be acquainted with several different rulebooks.

Edited February 4 by Chen Melling