What do I have ? Is it a Bing control device ?

  I checked the Bing catalogs for 1906 and 1912 and there is nothing in the track section that matches this item.  My guess (and I do mean guess) is that it is some kind of control for governing the direction of the travel of the train.  The sections of track Bing has for doing this consist of a single throw arm on the side of the track section which either drops or raises an inverted U section of large gauge wire. The U section will trip a lever on the underside of the CW engine and change its direction.  If this is what your track section does then it would seem to be a situation of when the wire is on one side of the inside it trips something on the train which does one thing and then when it is on the other side it does something else (or maybe it does the same thing and where it is placed depends on the direction of train travel).  Either way, I can't find anything in my Bing references that match.

I'm almost surprised it doesn't  have a logo on it somewhere, but it does look Bing-ish I agree.  The switch handles, everything looks Bing. 

  I just realized something.  When you look at the full sized image you can see direction arrows on the center section of metal.  They look to be hand drawn but they would argue for some kind of direction control or for some kind of activation of something that was direction specific.

Not a clue. But looking at the mechanics of it, underside, it looks like the top levers operate a spring loaded trap doors

It looks like part of a "doppelbahn" or "ausweichbahn" like this:

or this:

ausweichbahn

But I cannot find more.

Regards

Fred

It looks like a passing loop control for clockwork mechanisms. I'm guessing there was a lever hanging down from each locomotive that you could fix in the down position with a lever in the cab. The double track arrangement would let you run alternate trains by flipping the track mechanism up to catch the locomotive lever and stop one train in the siding, then activate the other one. The semaphore signal would be tied in with the mechanism maybe? Just my 0.02 or less.

This is no Bing, it comes from the Carette Double Track Railway. Here a picture from the catalog 1905.

Arne

Might be a Bing, or

Possibly a Maarklin 

Or possibly Hornby 

*images from Charles Coopers Railway Pages*

My guess would be Bing or Bassett Lowke(which could still be Bing as they did many of the BL trains pre WWII).  Pretty cool, I am slowly gathering CW and Live Steam Bassett Lowke trains for a small tinplate layout.     Mike the Aspie

Thanks Arne for the Carette catalog page.  I'm sure that's it. 

Now I'm pondering what to do with it.  I could restore it to working condition - an intreresting challenge.  The train stop levers are in a casting that seems to have been soldered to a tin base.  I'm thinking of trying epoxy, my soldering skill is limited.

Then what do I do with it  ?  Is there a market ?  I'm not going to add it to my collection which has no room for the miscellaneous pieces of junk that I pick up and fix just because I like to fix toy train stuff.  

I could donate it to Charles Cooper's Toy Train Track Museum.  You should see that if you're at all interested in the many varieties of track made over more than a hundred years by more than two dozen manufacturers.  Here's the link for it. 

https://railwaypages.com/the-museum

Probably several here, including myself that do run clockwork trains that would be interested in it for our layouts.  There is even a facebook group for wind up trains.  Still a popular subset of tinplate.  Trains that require no power of any kind, just a turn of the key!    Mike the Aspie

Thanks Mike.  I'm thinking that what I'll do when I have it working is start an Ebay auction and post a notice here when I do.