Can anyone identify these signals ?

[tvivian]

Good evening all,

 

I have been trying to find any information about the signals in this photo. They are plastic and similar in height to regular Hornby signals and appear to clip into track. There are some similar signals made by Fleischmann and Marklin, but they are not the same as these, indeed the Fleischmann and Marklin ones appear a bit more advanced.

 

Does anyone out there have any ideas ?

 

Many thanks

Edited February 8, 2018 by tvivian

[tvivian]

Sorry to bump the topic, still completely stumped as to what these are. Any ideas greatly appreciated.

 

Many thanks

[Oldddudders]

They appear to be Lartigue prototype, used on the French Est, Nord and PO systems. I have no idea who made the models, but might suggest you repeat the question in Continental/Overseas, where it may be more successful. 

[tvivian]

Thank you for the hint, I have posted on the continental section.

[Pacific231G]

They appear to be Lartigue prototype, used on the French Est, Nord and PO systems. I have no idea who made the models, but might suggest you repeat the question in Continental/Overseas, where it may be more successful. 

I can answer this fairly definitively.  They are signal masts (posts) from Jouef's  "sémaphore fonctionnel" (working semaphore signal) that appeared in its catalogues from 1977  (ref 9315 from 1977-1994 and 931500 from 1995-2001)

 

The signal mast clipped into a box attached to a piece of track that incorporated a section break with a rocker switch that also operarted the signal arm.  Roughly translated, the description in the catalogue says "this semaphore inspired by real signals enables the train to be stopped and started by simple finger pressure".  Inspired by does imply, as if there was ever any doubt, that this is not a scale model The coarseness of this model with its thick plastic signal arm is in marked contrast to the fine lattice work of a real Lartigue sémpahore.

 

They do look rather like hangovers from Jouef's "Jouet" (i.e. "toy") era though by 1977 when they first appeared most of the company's range was made up of reasonably scaled models. The catalogues also offered a set of the more familiar rotating board type signals but presented as very crude mouldings that could only be operated by twisting the whole mast on the base it plugged into. This does seem rather odd as the same catalogues include far more realistic models of standard SNCF colour light signals. 

 

It looks like the idea may have been to have a range of signal heads that clipped into the same base but, so far as I can tell, this was the only version they produced.

 

 

This rather garish version appeared in a number of Jouef's battery operated train sets but does show the mechanism  very clearly.

 

At first sight the choice of this particular signal, which was purely a block signal,  rather than a more familiar French signal like the absolute stop carré seems a little odd. I suspect though that, in the train set market, Jouef were looking at wider sales as it does bear a passing resemblance to signals commonly used in other countries.

 

The complete signal appears very frequently on ebay.fr but I've not seen the masts as separates items so am wondering from where they came.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Pacific231G

[tvivian]

Thanks very much for that. I obtained these in a job lot of all sorts of bits and pieces, definitely no bases or track for them in there, I have been through it all now.

[Pacific231G]

Thanks very much for that. I obtained these in a job lot of all sorts of bits and pieces, definitely no bases or track for them in there, I have been through it all now.

My pleasure.

I'd hazard a guess that these were dealer or distributor's spare parts as, particularly when used in train sets,  the masts were probably far more susceptible to getting broken than the base units.