How To Read Trackside Signs & Markers

hello again railfans you know in railroading speed is the name of the game getting a customer stuff from here to there as fast as possible now to keep things safe railroads have systems in place to regulate speed and warn crews of abnormal track conditions ahead and to do this to communicate this railroads have their very own sign language and it's important for rail fans to know these signs and what they mean in order to know more about the railroad and what the trains are doing we rail fans watch the track signals to see if a train is coming but the little signs and markers can also help you know other things like how fast a train will pass that point or if the line is temporarily blocked this is the approach warning signal to the plant city hold out on CSX is Plant City sub this signal type is called a fixed approach or a PP marker the single headlight is always yellow displaying an approach aspect the a PP play tells us that this signal only tells about the next signal ahead nothing about the track condition it's merely to warn the crew that they're coming upon a serious signal and to get ready for whatever it might read these approach markers are most often found one attract those from dark territory into a signal plan or junction with signal trackage here's another a PP marker on Tampa's Navy spur looking southbound this is the advanced warning for the absolute signal a Tibor why about a mile ahead a different signal model but still capable of only showing a yellow light this was Atlantic coastline track on this new installation in Ocala where the florida northern short line railroad crosses the CSX s line is a fixed approach with a single letter a the a can be with or without a lighted yellow signal this one has one back on the old seaboard and 4800 feet to the north of the Plant City a PP signal is the control point called Plant City hold out this is the Sirius signal that a PP marker was warning us about remember from my how to read CSX signals videos here on the channel that an absolute signal is a no-doubt-about-it thing run past a red one even a tiny little bit and the crew could be looking for new jobs by the end of the day they don't call them absolute for nothing but today we're looking at the trackside signs right next to the signal mast is the traffic control sign this tells the crew that from here on you're in dispatcher controlled signal territory do what the signals say going the other direction used to be a sign that said end TC now replaced with signs indicating entering TWC track warrant controlled territory and the name of the sub the hands spray paint markings indicate that low-class individuals have been here recently across the tracks is a yellow diamond shaped sign with the number 25 this is a permanent reduced speed sign used to indicate a stretch of track where the speed limit is slower than timetable speed much like a reduced speed sign on a highway going into a small town now on the backside of the sign is another sign with the exact same speed on it but clearly newer indicating to me that CSX has recently reduced this once 40 mile-per-hour sub to 25 mile per hour running most likely to avoid maintenance costs here's another speed limit sign but this one has two numbers the top figure is the speed for passenger trains the bottom for freight trains this is on the a line and the Plant City diamond is 500 feet ahead and they want you to slow down going over it and through town now going the other way to the north all trains can speed back up to 60 miles an hour a solid green diamond would indicate resume normal track speed just like always the railroad has a few mysterious hard to figure out signs you really do have to get hold of a rule book to understand them here at night siding on the CSX S Line stands at yellow sign with a red and black diagonal stripe it's called a warning board it tells the train crew that two miles ahead is either a speed restriction or the beginning of a maintenance work limit at this sign the train will either have to slow down or call the foreman to get permission to come through the limits ahead the sign is for the main line on the right likely because the work limit or slow order starts north of the siding where the track singles up this is a temporary sign that the road Foreman will remove when the track work is done here is a warning board and a temporary reduced speed sign the solid yellow tells a train to reduce speed as ordered in train messages if this were solid red it would be a conditional stop sign which means stop here and don't go any farther until the employee in charge gives you permission to do so on the other end of this work zone is a solid green sign letting trains know they are leaving the zone and can resume track speed an easier sign for most folks to figure out is the W most everyone assumes this means whistle and they're right this is the only place where the railroad still uses the term whistle every other reference says horn the whistle post is most often used as a grade crossing warning to remind the crew that a grade crossing is coming up and to blow the horn back on the needy spur here is an Atlantic coastline here a whistle post these are so cool because they not only signal to the engineer to blow the whistle this sign tells him the exact pattern to blow along another long a short then another long the standard whistle signal for a grade crossing now here's that signal pattern executed in 2018 another thing that struck me about this old Navy spur is how good shape this old rail is in 115-pound Jordan rail a lot of it dated 1945 here in 2018 still serving these rock trains going out here to Konrad yelling ttan just in such good shape now of course because it's coastline even though this line was probably rehabbed in the 1940s or even before beautiful built up ballast roadbed beautiful drainage contrasting that with the with the old seaboard plant city sub but just really if you look for these artifacts closely enough you can find them and that to me they're just fascinating a sign that's not used anymore on the CSX is the dtc block sign these delineated direct traffic control blocks in dark territory a dtc block was a specific length of track and permission to occupy it was given by the dispatcher to the train and that was his authority for movement when a train had permission in an absolute dtc block no one else could enter that track until the train released it back to the dispatcher now most dark territory is track warrant controlled which is basically the same as DTC but permission can be given in any length needed another example of signal track going to unsealed track warrant control is here at TN tower in tampa as the a line leads south into the tampa amtrak station track warrant control territory begins right here TN the dcs designates non signal track on the far side of the diamond and right under the northward absolute signal is a sign that lets us know we are entering traffic control system track this is the same thing as the entering TC sign they just changed it over the years and here is Amtrak 91 backing into its Tampa stop crossing TN and entering TWC trackage here's another one that's disappearing from the railroad under the Tallahassee block sign and the begin TCS on is a switching limit marker it tells mainline trains coming in that switchers can be working out of the yard this far it's the only such sign I've ever seen finally there are mile posts the most important locating tool on the railroad here at gfn a connection on the Tallahassee line there are two mile posts at the same point on the south side of the tracks one says 803 which tells us we are roughly eight hundred three miles from the north end of the system in Richmond Virginia over on the other side another mile post reads fifty two now here begins the Bainbridge sub of the old GF and a railroad the mile posts start at 52 and count upward it took me a while to figure this out but the GFN a once ran all the way to karabell florida on the gulf coast a distance measurement on google maps following the old gfn a route comes up to about 52 miles from Carrabelle to here give or take it's also my personal belief that these are L&N mile posts seaboard never had the little roof on it's mile markers they used the simpler and no doubt cheaper flathead stone version like here at Turkey Creek on the S line sometimes an old mile post sign can be on a new pole like here on the a line at Plant City this one's atop the speed limit sign never seen that one before either it tells us we are 861 miles from the home office in Richmond Virginia this time on the old Atlantic coastline and the latest version individual digits mounted to form the mile post number not much style but I'm sure they're economical and they get the job done now be sure to hit the like button if you like this video and I'll see you soon somewhere out here on the high iron at milepost s 816 near Knights Florida this is Danny Harmon out you

Channel: Distant Signal

Views: 559,852

Keywords: Railroad, railroad signs, app markers, signals, CSX, Tampa, Railfan, rails, trains

Id: 46mQlSU-qxk

Length: 10min 45sec (645 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 07 2018