RAILFAN GUIDES HOME RAILROAD SIGNALS HOME
I would like to thank Professor Mark Csele, who used to work for the Canadian Pacific, for the
accompanying rulebook scans. I made my single page reference sheet from his rulebook scans. His rulebook scans are undated.
A link to Transport Canada's website, with all of the information presented on this page is here.
Thanks to Suzie T for the link! From there, you can spend all day investigating the remainder of their website.
Almost all signals in Canada pre-1990 are single-lens searchlight signals and normally you'd find signals arranged as one, two or three aspects (heads) mounted on a
single mast. CROR Signals are designed in principle to display speed information only - how fast the engineer may proceed now and approaching the next signal. More complex
signals (e.g. three heads) can display a wider variety of speeds. On a high-speed mainline, a single-head signal is sufficient to display all necessary speed information
(i.e. full speed or prepare to stop) however where switches are involved such as a crossover to another line, two or more heads may be required to display the fact that
the engineer may have to slow to medium or limited speed to pass the switches before continuing.
Click here
for the PDF version of the sheets below.
Notice those signals which may still have a semaphore version have a small "S" in a circle at the bottom of the signal.
Note on the second page that all descriptions ONLY reference train speeds.
Came across this when searching for something else in May/2021, you just never
know where your stuff will show up! :-)
One thing that was left out, was the fact that the great majority of railroads
today are the result of mergers, therefore, the signaling systems quite often
remain the way they were before the merger took place, so the rulebooks have to
show all of the vintage railroads aspects. A good example of this was
Conrail, which
took over, what, something like 7 or 8 railroads, all of which had their own
distinctive signals - CSX, having taken over the New York Central in the state
of New York, just recently replaced the old NYC searchlights, so now, hopefully,
the signals are the same as what they replaced the B&O CPL's with years
ago......
I love trains, and I love signals. I am not an expert. My webpages reflect what I find on the topic of the page. This is something I have fun with while
trying to help others.
Please Note: Since the main focus of my two websites is railroad signals, the railfan guides are oriented towards the signal fan being able to locate them.
For those of you into the modeling aspect of our hobby, myindexa page has a list of almost everything railroad oriented
I can think of to provide you with at least a few pictures to help you detail your pike.
If this is a railfan page, every effort has been made to make sure that the information contained on this map and in this railfan guide is correct. Once in a while,
an error may creep in :-)
My philosophy: Pictures and maps are worth a thousand words, especially for railfanning. Text descriptions only get you so far, especially if you get lost or
disoriented. Take along good maps.... a GPS is OK to get somewhere, but maps are still better if you get lost! I belong to AAA, which allows you to get
local maps for free when you visit the local branches. ADC puts out a nice series of county maps for the Washington DC area, but their state maps do not have the
railroads on them. If you can find em, I like the National Geographic map book of the U.S..... good, clear, and concise graphics, and they do a really good job
of showing you where tourist type attractions are, although they too lack the railroads. Other notes about specific areas will show up on that page if known.
Aerial shots were taken from either Google Maps or www.bing.com/maps as noted. Screen captures are made
with Snagit, a Techsmith product... a great tool if you have never used it!
By the way, floobydust is a term I picked up 30-40 years ago from a National Semiconductor data book, and means miscellaneous
and/or other stuff.
Pictures and additional information is always needed if anyone feels inclined to take 'em, send 'em, and share 'em, or if you have something to add or correct.... credit
is always given! Please be NICE!!! Contact info is here
Beware: If used as a source, ANYTHING from Wikipedia must be treated as being possibly being inaccurate, wrong, or not true.
