Paddles and other stuff

Before the semaphore type train order signals at least some stations had a paddle board type TO signal. The last in service one that I am aware of was at Aztec, which you can barely see in the picture below. The Friends have a paddle signal installed in the Osier station, but I believe the paddles are kept safely stored between demonstrations. The TO signals at Cumbres were originally at the station building, but were reinstalled at the section house when the station was torn down. There is some uncertainty whether they were ever actually used in their current location. Perhaps also worth noting that the Silverton and Farmington stations did not have TO signals because they were at the end of branches. And like Chama Durango and Alamosa did not have trainorder signals. Do not confuse train order signals with block signals or other signals controlling train movement or track occupancy. The trainorder signals were only to give crews some advance warming if they had to stop to pickup orders at a station. If they were red they had to stop for orders. if they were green they could highball through. At least where I worked if a station had orders that did not restrict a train at that station the operator would "wave" the signals (red to green to red to greed) to indicated he had orders but he could hand them up on the fly. All this is probably way more than you wanted to know! But as the number of us who ran trains by timetable and trainorder inevitably shrinks, I see a fair amount to misunderstanding occasionally creeping into the discussion about the role of certain signals and how things were done back in the bad old days.





JBWX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2018 11:52AM by John West.