Assets/Signals/Signals for North American Routes

A description of the signals available for North American (US, CA, MX) Routes. Based on TANE SP4 (version 4.5).

Intro

North American railroads do not have a uniform signaling system. The type, aspect and indication vary between railroads, and even within railroads.

Signal types include:

• Single-lens multi-color, aka Searchlight
• Multi-lens single-color, aka Safetran, vertical position; the modern version has a single shield, older signals have a shield for each lense.
• Position
• etc.

There are plenty of resources on the Internet to describe the North American signaling systems.

• PDF charts for most of the railroads, [jovet]
• Explanation of the logic behind the signal indications, [The Krug, from the WayBackMachine archive]

Important: The following sections use Auran / Trainz terminology, to make it easier to understand the config and scripting.

Auran Signals

Searchlight Signal

Name	Aspects (Colors)	Name (State)	Description
Signal USA1 04	Red, Yellow, Flashing Yellow, Green.	Stop (0), Caution (4), Advance Caution (7); Proceed (8).	Absolute signal with a single head. Generally used on the frog (trailing) side of a junction. Signal USA 04 and Signal USA1 04-3A are similar, but without the flashing yellow / Advance Caution. Signal USA G 05 is a gantry version.
Signal USA1 05	Red, Yellow, Flashing Yellow, Green.	Stop then Continue (1), Caution (4), Advance Caution (7); Proceed (8).	Permissive signal with a single head. Generally used in ABS between junctions. Signal USA1 05-3A is similar, but without the flashing yellow / Advance Caution.
Signal USA1 02	Red, Yellow, Green. x2	Stop (0), Caution Right (3), Caution (4), Proceed Right (6), Advance Caution (7), Proceed(8), Medium(10)	Absolute signal with two heads (diverging medium). Generally used on the points (facing) side of a junction with two routes. This one is for diverging to the right. Signal USA1 02L is the same for diverting to the left. Signal USA 02 and Signal USA 02L are similar, except that they use Slow (9) instead of Medium (10).
Signal USA1 03			This signal is missing and needs to be created. Permissive signal with two heads (diverging medium). Generally used as advanced signal before an 01 or 02 signal. Signal USA 03, Signal USA L03 and Signal_USA_RTM use Stop (0), when they should be using Stop then Proceed (1). Signal_USA_RTM uses Yellow over Green for all indications (other than Clear and Stop). This makes sense (except Clear vs Stop & Proceed), as it does not matter if the next signal is left or right diverging, or approach.
Signal USA 01	Red, Yellow, Green. x3	Stop (0), CautionRight (3), Caution (4), ProceedRight (6), AdvanceCaution (7), Proceed (8), Slow (9), Medium (10)	Absolute signal with 3 heads (diverging medium or slow). Generally used on the points (facing) side of a set of junction with three or more routes. This one is for diverging to the right. It's operation still needs to be analyzed. It is not clear when the different indications are used. Signal USA L01 is the same for diverging to the left. But it is missing Medium (10). Signal_USA1_01L is the same, except that it uses Red over Red over Green for Slow (9).

... to be continued ...