The historical railway gradient marker

It’s located in our exposition of the line Svinov – Vítkovice: the former Northern Railway of Emperor Ferdinand. It is a railway line marker that indicates the longitudinal slope of the line behind the marker, either ascending or descending. These railway gradient markers were especially important
in the period when steam traction dominated the lines. But even today, the driver of the driving rail vehicle uses them to regulate the traction or braking power of the locomotive and the whole train. Currently, a black rectangular marker with a white rectangular box is used as a slope marker for
a section with no longitudinal slope, or arrows pointing upwards for uphill or downwards for downhill. Inside the white box is a black number indicating how many metres of the following track the slope data is valid for, and a red number indicating the slope of the section in promile.