I’ve been doing reading on railroad signaling and came across a website with photos of various signals… including one I’d not heard of before: “Fixed Distant Signal.”
These seem to be mostly a single semaphore style signal in a permanent “approach” (amber light, 45 degree position, white blade with black chevron) aspect. A photo can be seen for such at
I’m not sure what their purpose is… can anyone provide insight? Wouldn’t a simple sign do the same as such a signal if it’s fixed and displays only one option?
I can’t answer definitively but I may be able to provide a starting place.
My understanding is that they’re used on otherwise unsignaled (no ABS or CTC) lines as a warning that an engineer is approaching a block station (or an interlocking in modern times). An unlit sign would do the same, but be easier to miss.
The NORAC rulebook calls this signal (yellow lamp, semaphore blade at 45 degrees, with a sheet metal A on the mast) an Approach Restricting. See Page 61.
That said, there’s also Approach Clear, which is similar but with the blade vertical and a green lamp. Not sure how these work.
Ty, I would say that you are right. About fifty years ago, I noticed an approach signal on the Mississippi Central (a dark road) which was west of the crossing/junction of the Mississippi Central with the IC. I never did see the signal at the junction, but I do not doubt that it was at stop for the MSC until a MSC train approached the crossing and there was no IC train in the next two IC blocks. I also saw on the IC an advance approach signal well north of the intersection. I do not know if its aspect was advance approach only if the MSC was crossing or using the IC going into Brookhaven.
As an aside, one night I was going up to Wesson from Brookhaven on the old highway. As I approached the MSC crossing, I saw reflector strips on the sides of car that were crossing the highway–they kept me from running into the train, which I was not expecting to be crossing the highway.
There’s the remains of an old signal just outside Utica on the old Utica & Black River (RW&O, NYC, now MA&N) that was the only signal on the line, AFAIK. It may have been used to control traffic into the Utica yard area, as opposed to being a fixed approach. Its use dates to well before my knowledge of the line.
On the south side of Milford, MI, on the CSX Saginaw Sub there is a signal that I’ve never seen at anything by amber/yellow. I don’t recall that there is a matching northbound signal, so my assumption there would be that it’s a fixed signal. Further down the line is Wixom, once home to a large auto plant, and beyond that is the diamond at Plymouth.
I don’t visit the area all that often any more, and trains are sporadic on the line, to say the least, so I’ve never been able to observe that particular signal for any length of time.
Back when there were more secondary and branch line crossings, variations of this type of signal were common. I recall seeing them on both the C&NW and Milwaukee Road in Wisconsin.
You have to go back to the AAR Standard Book of Rules to get the correct definition and use of the signals you are talking about here. A fixed distant signal was just as the name indicated. It was a signal always showed the same aspect and was most often placed on unsignaled track to indicate an approach to an interlocking and to expect to have to stop at the next signal. I first came across this signal on the Boston and Maine about a mile up the hill from Connecticut River on their line from Keene, NH to HIllsdale Jct. on their Connecticut River line. It was an upper quadrant yellow blade I think, and was always in the diagonal position. I’ve got a slike of it someplace, but nothing I can simply scan and show.
There are many differences in operating procedures, etc., between the NORAC Code and the AAR Book. It is why so many fans…and railroaders…get confused about terminology and operations and how and why rails operated so differently (and efficiently?..yeah, my snark editorial comment) from then to now.
That can be done, too…something like “Railroad Crossing, One mile”. Or “Junction,” one mile.
But your signal is a sign that can be seen day or night and doesn’t need any words to convey its meaning. It is usually used at a non-iterlocked crossing or junction, where one is expected to stop, or at least go through the definition of Approach and be prepared to stop. At such a crossing one would expect to find a stop sign or a gate that would have to be lined properly in order for you to proceed.
I’d hazard a guess that a lot of these fixed approach signals were actually modified from ordinary block signals at one time, and were left up when intermediate block signals along a line were removed.
The next step up from a fixed approach would be an automatic interlocking, in which the yellow signal would clear and the route would be yours. But automatic interlockimgs suggest some sort of equality between the optional routes, where a fixed signal would more likely be on an inferior route.
In the Book of Rules era what was written was law. Each way written with precise words and punctuation and meaning and everyone was in agreement as to what they meant and how to follow the rule. Interpretations were also given when necessary. There were no vagueries in effect because if something was vague, it was corrected or interpreted and explained. Mile posts were precise as to where a train was at any given time and place; rights for operation and superiority were spelled out for each train and schedules were the guides that set up the rest of the operation (if a train was to be at point A at a given time, everything else worked on the law that the train would be at A at that time. There were rules spelling out how to ignore a rule by placing an alternative in its place, annulling or changing a schedule, moving meets and passes; indicating what each signal aspect meant; defining every job and the ranking of jobs; every piece of equipment, every word and application of words, people, and equipment. You had to know the Book of Rules or die. And you did learn and know the Book or if you didn’t die, you’d be fired. It was all taken seriously by everyone and everyone who followed the rules succeeded along with the operation of the railroad. To me, and I’m not taking anything away from the people who run railroads or work for the railroads, to me there often seems to be an informal acceptance of the CODE instead of a fervent devotion to the gospel of the Book of Rules. It is an attitude I often perceive but hope I am wrong.
In Grand Junction, Colorado - where the UP North Fork Branch, which is un-signaled, meets the UP mainline ( Formerly the Denver Rio Grande Western ) there is a approach signal that displays yellow 24/7. The signal even stays yellow as the train passes the signal.
Ditto at Las Animas Jcn. Colorado where the dark TWC Boise City Sub meets the beginning of the CTC La Junta Sub [WB] and ABS [EB] portion of the old ATSF northern transcon where Amtrak 3/4 Southwest Limited runs. For years this was a fixed aspect (yellow approach) semaphore with a fixed yellow lamp that looked more like a flashlight than a railroad signal.
There’s a few places I know where there is distant signal that only displays yellow approaching an otherwise automatic interlocking. (I know of at least one in Des Moines that protects a manual interlocking.) I know the rules/SSI allow for a distant signal that can display other indications, but the only ones I’ve ever seen are permanently yellow. A distant signal is also (GCOR) identified by a “D” plate. That means the signal does not convey block occupancy between it and the absolute signal of the interlocking.
The wording “fixed distant signal” kind of threw me at first. Any block or distant signal is a fixed signal. A better wording might be a distant signal that permanently displays yellow or approach. (On the UP the correct name would be Distant signal Approach.)
Zug, I think I’m understanding what Henry means. A blanket statement about modern railroaders who seem to have a flippant regard for the rules and work in general. I’ve heard it elsewhere, usually from retired railroaders lamenting about how things were done in the old days, but also even from company officers. Who often themselves aren’t much better. (And possibly even lumber yard employees who used to work at grain elevators.[;)]) Sadly, for the many good railroaders out here, there are a few who do fit Henry’s statement. The bad ones make the headlines and everyone else gets painted with the same brush.
I think the problem isn’t modern railroaders per se, it’s the pool of people the railroads have to hire from, the general population. It seems anymore people in general (at all age levels) have a different attitude towards things has compared to people in past years. I’m not sure how to put it, so I hope anyone reading this understands what I mean.
Jeff pretty well understands and explains my position well. But to expand…I’ve had conversations with contemporary railroaders and railfans who have contempt for the past practices of railroading, who join the commuter squads because their boyfriends told them to get a job and this was the easiest thing they could find, who say something describing railroading or their job with terminology I don’t understand and get argumentative when I try to frame it in the rail terminology I am familiar with and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. Most managers I know, especially those who have come up through the ranks of overnights, snowdrifts, derailments, who have been there and done that, understand what I was saying and agree.with me and complain about the new help. But the newbies with no experience couldn’t be bothered to know the past and learn and simply dismiss me as a babbling old man (but I don’t feel old!). As time has gone on over the years, more and more railroaders appear in it for the job, for the money and not for the career (and that is true of so much of America today outside of railroading) and will quit for a dime down the street or are counting the days, hours, minutes to their retirement…more so than at any time before. I hear more hate for the company for the rules, for whatever than ever before; they thumb their noses at authority and ignore the reasons for rules and regulations. &nb
John - agree. Washington Court House, Ohio had four lines intersecting as late as 1796 - all were “dark” lines, and three of them had permanent, unlit, semaphores set up about a mile short of the first interlocking plant they encountered (there were two interlockings, one of which had two separate crossings within the plan). Curiously, the B&O/CSX Midland Subdivision, which was the closest thing to a mainline operation in town, used only yard limit boards to control operation of through trains, and had a manually operated “tilt board” signal to govern the side-by-side crossing of the B&O Wellston Sub and the DT&I’s “main line”.
There are two “D” (for distant) signals in the Twin Cities area, both on unsignaled lines.
One set is on the former GN Monticello line. That protects the former SOO, now CP crossing in Crystal, Minnesota. The other set is on a former NP (now Minnesota Commercial) line in White Bear Lake, Minnesota that protects a former SOO crossing.
Both signals are continuously lit as caution (yellow) and have a large “D” on them. This means that one mile beyond that signal is another one and the engineer must expect the second signal (a home signal) to be red.
Part of the ‘disrespect’ for the rules that I perceive Henry commenting, from my perspective, is coming from how the rules themselve are be transformed and restated in the rule books.
When I broke into the industry in the 60’s, rules were stated in simple declarative 3rd grade English and stated almost in binary - Yes or No were the only applicable answers to any questions.
Over the years I have seen the rules go from being written by railroaders to cover railroading situations to being something written by lawyers (who may or may not be railfans - with all the negative connotations that can mean to serious day in day out working railroaders) to cover their posterior. There is now so much gray in to rule books I am surprised someone else could write a bestseller titled ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ without the railroads collectively claiming copyright infringement.
The gray that is now written into the rules leaves everyone wondering ‘what does this rule REALLY mean and how can I actually comply’. Current employees care just as much as prior generations but they don’t have simple declarative rules to comply with anymore.