Railway operations

Several compounds on this page begin with a verb, and German builds them in a way worth copying: the verb gives up its infinitive ending and stands as a bare stem. stellen, to set, becomes das Stellwerk, the building where points and signals are set; fahren gives die Fahrstraße, the path a train is allowed to run along; sperren, to close, gives die Sperrpause; and durchrutschen, to slide through, sits inside der Durchrutschweg, the stretch beyond a stop signal that must stay clear in case a train overruns it. The stem names what happens at the place, and the last element, as always, decides the gender and the plural: das Werk, so das Stellwerk and die Stellwerke. Some stems take a linking -e, as in die Haltestelle or das Wartezimmer, but none of the compounds here needs one.