Help identifying an Austrian railway switch

[Tomas9970]

Hello.

As part of working on the Austrian asset pack, I need some help with identifying a type of electrical railway switch that was installed before the AH950 (estimated before year 2000) and that is still commonplace in stations around Austria. Obviously modeling from pictures is not a problem but in order to get it properly into the game, I need to know it by name.



I tried looking through VAE and Voestalpine websites in the web archive to find some advertising material that mentions this but it's clearly from the pre-internet era as even the oldest snapshots already advertise Hydrolink. Also ChatGPT thinks it's ZSB 2004 but I'm obviously not gonna trust it especially if I can't find another source that would even mention such a model.

I understand how big of a stretch this is but does anyone have specifc information or at least can give me a name to put on this?

Thanks a lot.

[taoroot]

It looks similar to https://cdnstoreapp.blob.core.windows.n ... review.pdf , but I guess you've already found this document.

Also point machine looks similar to https://www.voestalpine.com/railway-sys ... t-machine/

[Tomas9970]

Thanks but that's not it. The Ecostar is modern, probably newer than the AH950 that I have already made and simply not worth modeling because it looks similar. This is much older than that and was even installed with mechanical arm before Hydrolink was a thing, which is why I want to model it. Because that part looks distinct.

Here on the first switch is the mechanical arm that I'm going for (and need a point machine to match). You can see how it's quite different from the modern stuff.

[Tomas9970]

Hello. I'm bumping this because I will need a solution pretty soon. It should be one of the two things.

a) Finding the name of the point machine and the tongue-position detectors, about which I haven't found any information yet.
b) Finding a clever way to name them in game files without knowing these things.

Not saying I need them right now because Dürnkrut is a relatively modern station but the older point-machines will be necessary for just about any expansion (unless I want to modernize these stations in-game) and are still exceedingly common in general.

Thanks for any information. If it exists.

[Tomas9970]

Hello. So in the end, I e-mailed Harald M. Müller, who is the author of the "Von Stellwerken und anderen Maschinen" blog. He was happy to help me and we found that its the Alcatel EHW 825, which is still being manufactured since 1970s. So this is solved. Yay!
https://www.gtkb.hu/index.php?option=co ... 38&lang=en

To be fair I should still identify the end-position detectors that I know are something from Thales and Alcatel (no further info) but they are only really necessary for 760 and 1200 meter switches, which I don't need for this project. To be fair, they are also used on shorter switches if the allowed speed going straight is high enough but I can live without having them there (for now) considering limited info.

[joektn]

Hello. So in the end, I e-mailed Harald M. Müller, who is the author of the "Von Stellwerken und anderen Maschinen" blog. He was happy to help me and we found that its the Alcatel EHW 825, which is still being manufactured since 1970s. So this is solved. Yay!
https://www.gtkb.hu/index.php?option=co ... 38&lang=en

To be fair I should still identify the end-position detectors that I know are something from Thales and Alcatel (no further info) but they are only really necessary for 760 and 1200 meter switches, which I don't need for this project. To be fair, they are also used on shorter switches if the allowed speed going straight is high enough but I can live without having them there (for now) considering limited info.

Hello,
Right from the start, I am really pleased that ÖBB infrastructure is slowly but surely finding its way into Zusi, and I am happy to support you in this as far as I can.
I spoke to a track supervisor today and he said that ÖBB Infra primarily used the end-position detector "IS2000" from Voestalpine. That was basically the standard product for many years. Today, we are upgrading to IE2010 (voestalpine SIGNALING Zeltweg GmbH Signal and Safety Technology).
Over the years, the appearance of the point motors and the housing has changed slightly, but the technology remains the same. Feel free to contact the colleagues at Voestalpine in Zeltweg, who are always happy to help.

[Tomas9970]

Hello. Thanks for the input but that's not it. I'm familiar with both IS2000 and IE2010 at this point and this is way different. I think the EPD is made by Alcatel and Thales because it has that same back cover as the EHW 825 point machine but the only reference I could find were some order lists from ÖBB that mentioned "spare parts and testing equipment for Thales/Alcatel end-position detectors" and didn't contain any names nor pictures. Also Voestalpine equipment is some of the most accessible in terms of information even without asking directly so I don't think I need to ask.

As for progress, January has been pretty wild so I had a lot to deal with and didn't have a lot of time to work on this stuff. Though I do want to get back to proper development.

edit: I obviously wouldn't say no to more concrete information that I can implement. Especially when looking forward to things like catenary (that isn't really researched yet) but in this case it seems unnecessary.