When you don't have anything better to do, you break some stuff ...

... or something like that.

While the ramp rebuild is now complete, I somehow managed to bend and damage the semaphore on track 2 in Emsingen today. Even with carefully bending it back, the semaphore arm and linkage seems to be twisted in a way that makes the arm hard to move. Certainly too hard for the dual-coil machine that drives the signal.

Twisted arm and misaligned linkage of the semaphore on track 2 (in the middle) prevent the arm from even going into the horizontal position to signal Stop (Hp0).

Due to a lucky accident a couple years ago (also known as "over-buying"), I had a spare of the exact same semaphore, so I could install a replacement fairly easily. Nevertheless, along with dinner there went the evening. No point to start something new at this time.

Semaphore replaced and tested.

By the way, I budgeted a day for rebuilding the tracks on the ramp. In the end it did take me about 12 hours to get that done over the course of 3 days. Not exactly how I planned to do it, but one has to take care of more than just the railroad while on vacation...

Next up: Track work in the locomotive servicing facility, including finding out why the turntable likes to short out the whole layout. This work was the motivating reason for fixing the ramp, since I wanted easier access to the servicing facility segment and thus had it out of the layout, which made the ramp accessible.