Some of them look like railway signalling panels. We still have a lot of them in Europe, newer ones are computerised of course but still plenty of relay-based ones in operation.
Speaking of this, when I see metro/subway systems in Asia, I think about how they decide to hard-code vs. have dynamic displays for the in-car maps and station announcements.
You know, because their subway systems actually grow and change over there, during the course of a few years.
