Talk:Railway semaphore signal

Merger proposal

I suggest that both the Home signal and Distant signal articles be merged into this, relatively new, article on railway semaphore signals. Looking at all three articles, a considerable amount of repetition is apparent. I don't think there is sufficient material to justify separate articles for each. Whilst it is true that home signals and distant signals can exist in other than semaphore form (i.e. colour lights) these articles mainly describe the semaphore type and any additional information that would otherwise be lost could be incorporated into the Railway signal article. Signalhead (talk) 20:43, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

It is a pain - on one hand it is nice to link directly to the type of signal you are talking about in another article, but they you end up with small pages with not much. Perhaps a listing of 'major' redirects that editors can refer to when needing to link to the page. Linking to a section of a page directly is trouble prone, doing it via a redirect reduces the number of possible dodgy links. Wongm (talk) 09:59, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

This rationale and subsequent merger seem to me strikingly ill-advised. The fact that the articles were structurally unbalanced in the time in no way justifies the perpetuation of that imbalance by merging them into this article; nor does the notion that we could someday add balancing information into a different article. The section in Railway signal most germane to these topics appears to be "Application and positioning of signals". I would suggest pursuing one of three alternatives:

1. Reversing the merge and keeping separate articles for Home signal and Distant signal.
2. Moving the content of both of those sections into "Application and positioning of signals".
3. Moving the content of both of those sections into a new, separate article such as Application of railway signals.

I have requested comment from the Trains WikiProject. Choess (talk) 02:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

This material belongs in railway signal, except there are major problems with the overall organization of the signalling articles which need to be sorted out first. Mangoe (talk) 01:48, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the idea of a new article on Application of railway signals may have merit. There will never be enough material to justify separate articles for Home signal and Distant signal. There is also the small problem that these terms aren't universal, and there are other kinds of signals to consider as well. If we did go for a new article, it would have to be written from a global perspective, dealing only with the fundamental underlying principles and avoiding country-specific terminology as much as possible. (In the UK, 'home signal' is frequently wrongly used as a synonym for 'stop signal'; I'm not sure how these terms are applied in US practice.) –Signalhead ^< T > 18:33, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

I like your proposal. See the related discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains, trying to hash out a hierarchy of signaling articles—see what you think of the draft. I suspect there's enough material in "home signal" and "distant signal" for a new article, but maybe we should merge it into that first section of Railway signal first and then spin off a sub-article if necessary. I agree that we should avoid making it too specific to one country, although we should try to provide coverage of whatever national variations exist. Apropos of which, it sounds to me like the last sentence of the home signal section at present is reversed as to nationality. My admittedly parochial experience (mostly Pennsylvania Railroad and successors) would lead me to believe that "home signal" is mostly used for the controlled signals at the limits of an interlocking; an American wishing to refer to signals with the most restrictive aspect possible (Stop-Signal, the equivalent of Danger AIUI) would use the term "absolute signal". Choess (talk) 01:46, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

"Use" section

This entire section is pointless and misleading since it's actually a description of absolute block signalling. Eldomtom2 (talk) 18:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)