Re: [NSW]-Question about signal phones

[Eddie Oliver <eoliver@efs.mq.edu.au>]

To return to serious discussion about this:

There is no safeworking rule or signal design rule which links the
positioning of signal phones to the type of the signal (in NSW). People
asserting the existence of such a rule are evidently drawing false
conclusions from observations of what is generally the case in some
areas, or they have been indoctrinated by someone else who had been
falsely exposed to such a notion. 

It is true that in many areas, most (sometimes even all) home signals
have the associated phones on separate posts. But this is not because
there is a direct "rule" requiring this. In most such areas, it is
evidently simply because the phones in the interior of the interlocked
area are connected to a yard telephone circuit, and most yard telephones
are on separate posts. 

There may also be other reasons, notably occupational health and safety
reasons such as not putting a phone where someone might clobber their
head on other hardware (like extra lights on the signal) while using the
phone. And of course since signal-spotter told us in his original
posting that he tries to implement the non-existent rule, it will become
a self-fulfilling prophecy where he is involved.

It seems extraordinarily unfortunate that people will invent supposed
rules which don't actually exist, and then these non-rules may get a
status which they don't deserve (and which may even be dangerous when
people erroneously apply the non-rules, as could happen in this context
if a driver uses the non-rule to identify a signal type incorrectly). As
a general safety issue, I (and all the safeworking and signal people I
have discussed this case with in the last couple of days) plead that
people deal with the rules that do exist and don't go creating or
accepting new "unwritten" ones.

Question for people who like such challenges: Name a signal which has
been in the news over the last year or so, and which is an immediate
counterexample to the proposition that automatic signals have the phone
on the signal post.

Eddie