Signalling

One of the great challenges of model railways is signalling. On the New South Wales Government railways and subsequent authorities, working semaphore signals dominated the safety and perway landscape.


In model form, the best working semaphore signals I have seen were on the layout "Menangle", probably thirty years ago. Mind you, not many layouts even try to have working semaphore signals. Winmar, for example, does not anticipate seeing signals for some time (and not just because the layout is in storage in a Canberra warehouse). Working signals do look great - even working colour light signals.

Anyway, I was out last weekend at Gunning to see that the semaphore signals have finally been removed. The change to colour light signals in the Cullerin is pretty much complete. The remains of the semaphore signals and posts have been cut up and sent to the tip. The colour light signals that had literally been under wrap for a while now are now in action. You can see a before and after shot below. The photos were taken on the 5th and 27th June 2009.


There's something about working semaphores that really can't be outdone by their colour light equivalents - but colour light signals are much easier to model!