Sorry that this took me so long to respond to. The CRRM volunteer that has been helping me with the Newton signal that we want to put up at Osier was on vacation for three weeks and couldn't answer your question. He knows a lot about the semaphore type signals too. There is one on the Richardson Library.
What follows is a lot of speculation on my part that could easily be verified by looking through the D&RGW Rules book. I don't have a copy, but maybe someone else out there does and tell me if this is correct.
First, I'm pretty sure that the paddles at Cumbres were white on one side and black on the other. The white would show on the left paddle to an approaching train and the black would show on the right paddle. This comes mainly from looking through the Dorman books and realizing why they went to this type of signal. I know that yellow often looks like black on some old black and white photos, but I really think it was black. I doubt that there was any red, because at night that could not be seen as well as white. Also there appears to be no stripes as was common on other railroads. Why they are now painted red on both sides is beyond me. Artistic license by the C&TS/Friends or a late D&RG modification? I assume that the same semaphore was moved to the section house when the station was torn down as is the one there today.
Here is a little speculation: The Newton signal (a white and red rotating target) was apparently used on all the stations of the San Juan Extention during it's heyday before the Depression. I know because I saw a 1920's ICC valuation last month. Dorman's book shows a Newton on the Cumbres Station in all the early photos. Then a 1935 photo shows the semaphore in use. Why did they change it? Well, because the biggest drawback to the Newton was that it could not give different signals at the same time to trains approaching from opposite directions. This would not be much of a problem at most stations since you rarely had a meet. But at Cumbres, where the helpers cut off and trains were reassembled, this could frequently have been a problem. So they went to a semaphore signal which had two floor mounted levers in the station that would control each paddle separately (Bob Ground - is anything left of these?). Thus the operator could tell one train to stop and the other one to keep going.
As far as the meaning of the positions of the blades goes, here is an outright guess. I'm told that on most railroads horizontal means stop (for a 19 order) and vertical means go. For a 31 order, where the engineer only has to slow down to pick up the orders on the run, the blade was at a 45 degree angle. Again, with the latter situation, the Newton type had a shortcoming. The operator had to come out with a yellow flag or lantern to give that signal. But Dorman's book clearly shows the paddles to sometimes be in an inverted angle. Maybe for the D&RGW this meant proceed and an upright 45 degree angle meant to slow for orders. I'm pretty sure that horizontal always means stop.
As far as the lenses go, I have no idea. The Newton had a lantern with red and green lenses, I think. The semaphore had lenses (reflective only?) opposite the paddle. Were there red, green and yellow lenses?
Can anybody else help?
