I know that Sp’s red gyrolight turned on when the locomotive went into Emergency braking. Was it trainlined, or did only the lead unit’s light turn on. Also I know that roads like the ICG and CB&Q all had a dual beam mars light. One beam was red, the other white. Was the red beam on these used for emergency breaking also, or did it have a different purpose?
Thanks.
Running wrong main in current of traffic territory (251 Territory) among other uses…Dependent on that individual railroad’s rule book.
okay…I’m planning on making my freelanced model railroad’s engines carry that dual colored mars light, with the red coming on when the train went into emergency breaking, and I was wondering if that was prototypical. A friend of my dad’s said that the Nickle plate used their red Mars for emergency break indicator too so…
A lot of roads used the red “mars” light. C&NW used both red and white on passenger E-units and the red only on a lot of freight units. I think they probably concentrated the red-only on their double track lines. I think that the C&NW was the first to install Mars lights on locomotives. A fireman (the kind that puts out fires) had recommended the development of the Mars light to the head of Mars candy; so it was first installed on fire trucks. GN placed both the red and white “mars” lights on (at least) passenger units. NP placed the red and white “mars” lights on all F units, both passenger and freight. The U-25, 28 and 33-Cs and the SD 45s were purchased with only the red “mars” light (actually, the Pyle gyralight, which does a oval/circle instead of the figure 8 of the actual Mars light.) CB&Q put red and white “mars” lights on everything except end cab switch engines. Amtrak’s SDP40s came out with “mars” lights.
A derailment on multiple track blocking adjacent tracks is a critical situation in that a train on an adjacent track can run into the derailed train. The red “mars” light was meant to deal with that potential hazard. If a train approached another train displaying a red “mars” (oscilating) light, it was to stop before it passed the head end of that train (if possible.) Today the situation is/was handled by throwing a red fusee on the adjacent tracks and also by radio warnings.
“Mars” lights were also used on the rear of passger trains as sort of an additional marker. Sometimes it was configured so it was on steady until the brakes were applied when it went into oscilating motion to warn following trains.
I put “mars” in quotes because a lot of these oscilating lights were Pyle gyralights. I don’t recall any rule book which mandated the used of red “mars” lights when running against