Several derailers near the Temple, TX locomotive maintenance facility have a light box seemingly associated with them. The box, which is rectangular, sits on a pole a few feet off the ground. It has a light on the end, which is green or blue.
Is this a derailer that can be activated from the locomotive? I probably get the green light; what is the blue light saying?
The blue light indicates men working on or near the cars protected by the derail and those cars are not to be moved until released by the work crew supervisor.
Blue lights on a railroad indicate there are employees servicing or reparing cars/ locomotives. Operating crews may not pass a blue signal or do anything to the equipment protected by a blue signal. This is for the protection of the people working on the quipment. Blue lights are somewhat akin to lock-out tag-out in industrial applications in that only certain people are allowed to remove them. On a RR, they can only be removed by members of the same “craft”, though it doesn;t have to be the specific employee who set it up, which is different than lock-out tag-out.
I suspect that on the device you saw, a blue light means equipment if being worked on behind the derail, and green means that it is OK for operating crews to come into the area.
Think of the blue as the most absolute ‘red’ there could possibly be: you stop and do not proceed at all when it is shown.
Thanks for the information. It is very helpul.
Could the derailers be operated remotely, i.e., from the cab of a locomotive, or do they have to be set and/or released manually?
For Safety reasons, I suspect the Blue Light Derails to be operated & LOCKED manually.
Dilectrics can be actuated by a wired control panel in the facility by a single control operator-in-charge.
This is a safety device. You absolutely do not want that blue-flag device thrown by a remote signal in a locomotive by someone completely clueless about what the blue flag is protecting, intentionally or not. That control operator has a set of protocols to go through before he locks or unlocks a blue flag derail. The lock on the control panel is somewhat similar to “stops” used by a DS on older systems.
Blue flag won’t be remotely thrown while some switches (usually hydraulic) can be. There are a handfull of at-grade crossing signals/bells/gates with remote controls with special reasons for activating the gates by remote, but these are rare (Vandalia, IL / LA-Hobart UPS) and have special FRA/PUC exemptions.
The person that set it and locked it should also be the person taking it down. To everybody else - NO TOUCHEE!
Pretty much the same rules for Lock-out/Tag-out in a non-railroad work situation. I suspect blue flag predates LOTO by a few decades.