this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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HistoryPhotos

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HistoryPhotos is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!

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The new, fully automated, station switchboard at Uppsala Central station in 1938 (lemmy.zip)
submitted 1 day ago by stoy@lemmy.zip to c/historyphotos@piefed.social
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/61694982

I am back!

I remember there was a few requests about more control rooms when I started posting here last time, so I thought I might honor the request even if it doesn't show much of the room part...

Anyway, this is the fully automated control panel for the rail yard at Uppsala Centralstation in Uppsala, this photo was taken on 1938/05/11 and published in the local paper, Uppsala Nya Tidning, the day after.

This machine controls the switches and signals of the rail yard at the station, a similar model can be found operational and in use at the local heritage railroad.

Sadly I don't know what the indicators mean, or how to operate it, I just think it is cool!

This photo was taken by Paul Sandberg, and is in the public domain.

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[โ€“] JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

That's rather fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to write it all up. ๐Ÿ™‚

It also reminds just a tiny bit of the Apollo moon missions, which I often listen to the audio of. They made a special point of training astronauts to think externally, not the natural process of doing so internally. That involved lots of verbal checklists, communicating extensively with each other and Mission Control over whether something had been attended to. Even stuff that they barely had any real interaction with, such as the Cosmic Ray Detector panels.

[โ€“] unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth 2 points 6 hours ago

In fact, in Japan, they have what they call "point and tell". Essentially, every signal drivers see, they point at it and say what it tells them, for instance, "proceed at max 50 km/h". It does quite a bit to increase safety, because it forces you to consciously acknowledge safety relevant points.