Gatekeeper
A gatekeeper is a railway employee who has the task of closing the gates at a level crossing before a train approaches or before a train journey is permitted and then reopening them after the train has passed. For decades, guard-operated barriers were the only means to technically secure a level crossing. It was only after the Second World War that automatic and remote-controlled systems prevailed, which largely made the job of the gatekeeper extinct. Today most level crossing safety systems are controlled either directly by the train or from an interlocking .
The building in which the gatekeeper its service performed is called barrier posts . In the narrower sense, this can be understood as a railway system where the gatekeeper has the sole and operational task of securing and monitoring level crossings.
The beginnings: railway attendants as security personnel
The history of the barrier post and thus of the barrier guard in its present form goes back to the railroad guard posts from the early days of the railway . In addition to many technical and structural problems, two operational tasks had to be solved on the new railway lines in the first half of the 19th century: communication between the stations and guarding the railway. These tasks were solved by setting up station guards at short intervals along the route.
The railway attendants formed the communication path between the stations by initially passing on acoustic signals and later optical signals . The acoustic signals were given with horns. A certain sequence of horn tones had a certain meaning (e.g. "Train is coming from A"), similar to the way that shunting signals are still used today. The acoustic signals had the disadvantage that they were only incompletely or not at all perceived by the neighboring guards when there was disturbing ambient noise. Therefore, one soon switched to the exclusive use of optical signals.
For optical communication, flags , so-called basket signals (colored baskets or balloons pulled up on masts) or wing signals similar to the main signals still used today, were used. Lanterns with colored screens were used at night .
In addition to post-to-post communication, there was also post-train communication. Thus, the signalman signaling the train being free of the following path section, and vice versa, the guard with flags, disc or lantern signals were added to the train information on the sequence of moves (eg. B. " Sonderzug succeeds", as the signal 17 of the free path signal order still valid until 1950).
In addition to receiving and issuing signals, the track attendants had to guard and control a section of the route assigned to them. This task had different backgrounds. On the one hand, railways were a completely new phenomenon in the use of space in the early days, and not only, as mentioned many times in the literature, for rail travelers, but also for residents due to their landscape-cutting character and as linear private property. For this reason, it was believed that the entire length of the railway had to be guarded against unauthorized use or external interference.
Secondly , there was little trust in the superstructure and engineering structures in the first few years , as there was no experience with loads as high as those caused by railroad trains. In some cases completely new construction methods were used for bridges , dams and tunnels , the suitability of which had to be proven. The railway attendants therefore had to inspect their route regularly and check for damage. The railway building and operating regulations of 1905 still require three inspection rounds per day for main lines and one for secondary lines. Third, of course, the crossroads had to be guarded to avoid accidents between trains on the one hand and carts, riders, pedestrians and herds of cattle on the other.
All of these requirements jointly determined the location of the guards' posts: The distance between the posts resulted from the maximum distance over which a reliable transmission of acoustic or optical signals was possible. On a straight stretch, for example, the Main-Neckar Railway was set at 1,500 m, but on winding stretches with poor visibility, the distances could also be significantly less.
The exact position of the guard post was determined on the one hand by the visibility and on the other hand by the existing railway facilities. For example, posts were preferably set up on larger engineering structures such as bridges and tunnels or at crossings. The barrier posts in the narrower sense were to develop from the latter.
In the literature there are indications that attempts were not only made to place the guards at crossings, but, conversely, during the construction of the railway, efforts were also made to only provide crossings where a railroad attendant was required for the signal transmission. Here, a mutual approach has presumably taken place in the path planning.
The topography , the settlement structure with a dense network of paths and a route philosophy that largely wanted to avoid earth movements and engineering structures meant that a comparatively large number of level crossings had to be set up (and then guarded) in Germany. In 1870 the average distance between two level crossings was 625 m in Germany, 833 m in Austria and 4000 m in England. A corresponding number of guard posts had to be set up.
In many cases, only shelters were built for the railway guards at their posts. Illustrations from the 19th century show sentry boxes , as they were mainly used in the military sector. If the station attendant was at a greater distance from the nearest settlement - for example, on the Main-Neckar Railway, the limit was a quarter of an hour's walk - a house was built for the station attendant and his family.
From railway attendant to barrier attendant
With the introduction of telegraphy, the increasing improvement of the superstructure and the refinement of maintenance strategies, the functions “general railway surveillance” and “message transmission” gradually became superfluous. The railway attendant in his original, comprehensive task was no longer needed. What remained was the pure barrier post, whose sole task was to secure level crossings.
The gatekeeper as a railway policeman
The gatekeepers within the scope of the railway building and operating regulations of the Federal Republic of Germany were, by virtue of their function, regular railway police officers, as was the custom in the Kingdom of Bavaria since the foundation of the railways through the authorization of the sovereigns first in 1835. This police authority was unique in police law: the gatekeepers were police officers even if they were not civil servants under status law. Employed gatekeepers at private railways had a special obligation under the ordinance against bribery and betrayal of secrets by non-civil servants vis-à-vis the Federal Railway Directorate - as the higher police authority. The gatekeepers of the Deutsche Bundesbahn were usually civil servants with a career in the simple service (works supervisor career, specializing in barrier service). This episode of police law only came to an end with the reform of the railway police law on April 1, 1992 (transition of the railway police from the railway administration to the federal border police - today the federal police ).
Todays situation
The high personnel costs of guard-operated level crossings and the fundamental security problems of level crossings have resulted in many guard-operated level crossings being completely abandoned, replaced by overpasses and underpasses or secured with automatic barrier systems. Efforts to clear barriers can be traced back to the 19th century. In recent times, however, new barrier posts have emerged as a result of the fact that train stations are being dismantled and the former signal boxes only have to secure level crossings. Almost 300 barrier posts are still in operation in Germany today. Only two thirds of these are “real” posts, the rest are degraded signal boxes , block posts, etc. Spatial concentrations are found in the Münsterland , Allgäu , Saxony-Anhalt and Hesse . According to information from Deutsche Bahn, there were around 500 gatekeepers in the spring of 2006.
In each barrier post there is a warning flag and a horn to stop trains or to secure the level crossing if the system fails.
Gatekeeper in literature and music
A signalman is the main character of the novel Signalman Thiel of Gerhart Hauptmann .
De Isenbahnboomupundaldreier (literally: "Eisenbahnbaum-hoch-und-down-Dreher") is a song by the North German duo De Plattfööt about a gatekeeper.
