Notes

DMU 628/928 653 is coming from Braunschweig (Brunswick) into Goslar and is now just about 700 m (slightly less than half a mile) away from it’s destination.

In the background you can see the Harz mountains nicely, more in the foreground are nice old (but still used) semaphores. In between lies the not-so-nice parking garage of local Hotel “Der Achtermann”. This channel the railroad runs in is part of Goslar’s medieval city wall structure. The wall itself used to be over to the left, and in fact the hotel I mentioned is named so because it partly uses the old “Achtermann” tower, one of the larger guard towers of Goslar’s city wall.

The larger signal slightly in the back is a home signal, and currently gives the train a clear (Fahrt, Hp 1) aspect. For nighttime there is also a colored light giving the information, which raises the question why they bothered with the mechanics in the first place. In front is a distant signal, informing the engineer of the next home signal’s (obviously the one after the one right behind it) aspect. This one says expect stop (Halt erwarten, Vr 0), which makes sense since the train ends in Goslar anyway. A distant signal in germany stands about a kilometer away from the home signal, which, together with the knowledge that Goslar’s station is 300 m long (about 330 yards, thanks for the information to Google Earth) gives the 700 m figure above.