Everything started from a miniature photographing forbidden sign…
Initially, the Repository was a simple website where I dumped my variations on Polish railway signs and signals. It appeared that there is a great demand for such additions, therefore I quickly fetched the blueprints of real signs from Radosław Bach’s Railway Regulations website and created the first free, accurate and available to all cardboard model of Polish State Railways’ signs.
Since then, I collect in Repository self-designed models of details of railway infrastructure that may come handy to any railway modeler. You can find here models of semaphores, signals, signs and other devices commonly used on Polish railways. Except that, models of the details of the tracks neighborhood are also available ex. road signs. All this is available for free in the most popular railway scales as the ready-to-print PDF documents.
Models are as accurate as possible. I always try to create them according to official blueprints and regulations. If such documents are not available, I measure and photograph the real object. Below the description of each model you can find the sources of the documentation, so you can verify the accuracy of the model.
This website is the third version of the Repository. My intention is to expand it to a form of a digest regarding the signaling regulations and design – simplified and comprehensible for average modeler without railway background. I intend to follow the example of a great series of books Signale by Stefan Carsten, regarding the German railway signalization rules, forms and history. I hope to collect in one place the knowledge, which currently is scattered between countless books, forums and websites.
As the website was also noticed by the modelers and railway fans from abroad, I’ve decided to open along the Polish version its English and German counterparts.
A word about author
To keep it short I’ll abridge my biography to: I was born on the first day of the year of Chernobyl disaster and somehow I am alive till today. I introduce myself as adventurer living a triple-life of a programming archaeologist a day, a CG artist at night and a railway enthusiast during weekends.
My adventure with model building started in primary school when I’ve converted from 2D to 3D multiple cardboard models available on the market. Soon after I got fascinated with railways. One can say with no reason – I had little in common with railway, had no railway man in family, even the closest tracks were quite far from my home. Nevertheless, after reading the Cardboard models of railway cars and locomotives, I’ve joined my modeling passion with the new railway frenzy.
Since then I’ve switched from active building to active design of models and blueprints searching. My innate interest in pictograms and meaning of signs made me focus on railway signaling. The result of this is the Repository itself and the membership in Polish Association of Railway Enthusiasts as signaling fitter and webmaster.