Signal light question

Swav, railroad signals are NOT "...green on top, amber in the middle, and red at the bottom." Depending on the aspect they must display, they could have any color appear almost anywhere. It is a VERY common misconception that signals are set up the way you have described.

Here are a few examples that just pop into my head at the moment:

"Medium Clear" is red over green, or red-green-red on a 3-light signal.

"Medium Approach" is red over two yellows (on some roads.)

"Advance Approach" is two yellows.

There is a lot more to railroad signalling than just CLEAR (green), APPROACH (yellow) and STOP (red.)

Wyhog Rules

quote:

Originally posted by Forest:
Wyhog Rules

Yessir! I can always count on Wyhog to set the record straight on things like this.

Rich: I think that Swav was talking about the location of the light aspects within a signal head. Probably a Type D with three aspects, and generally, but not always, the green aspect was on top. If I understand your comment, you are talking about multiple signal heads on one mast, am I right?

Of course exceptions are the rule, and I've seen signal heads with only two aspects, say amber and red, in which case the upper aspect, normally green, was simply blank.

As to the number of signal heads on one mast, I recall in Chicago that the Northwestern, which primarily used signal bridges on multiple track lines, had one of these massive bridges with a number of masts, one for each track beneath the bridge, and on each mast there were three and four signal heads. Most of the indications were red at any one time.

Paul Fischer