Re: Signalling in Victoria

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

David Langley wrote:
> 
> MarkBau1 wrote:
> 
> >
> > I'm sorry, I can't make any sense out of this question/comment at all. You may
> > be getting confused with VR where there is a "medium speed" Under GCOR there is
> > no such thing as "medium speed" a bottom light simply tells you that you are
> > diverging and you are to proceed at the speed for that location.
> 
> Sorry I might have been a little out my depth there. What does GCOR mean.

GCOR = General Code of Operating Rules, used by many of the railroads in
the western part of the US and therefore what Mark has had experience
with.

NORAC covers predominantly the eastern half, and CROR covers Canada.

My understanding is that the signal aspects are not themselves part of
the GCOR:

GCOR Paragraph 9.1 is: 
"Signal Aspects and Indications
"Distant,block and interlocking signal aspects and indications are shown
in the special instructions. 
"Signal aspects are identified by the position of semaphore arms, color
of lights, flashing of lights, position of lights, or any combination.
Aspects may be qualified by marker plate, number plate or marker light.
"Signals may display color light aspects or semaphore arms and color
lights."

The two roads referred to by Mark, viz. UP and BNSF, are both GCOR
roads, but do not have identical signal aspects (although they are
pretty close). Indeed if one wishes to pursue the verbal technicalities
in Mark's context one stage further, one might say that UP is more
speed-signalled than is BNSF, in that UP definitions contain much more
specific references to speeds (as per the examples I posted a day or so
ago) whereas BNSF is happier to rely on the engineer to assess the
consequences of a divergence and is therefore closer to route-signalled.

Moreover many of these matters are further complicated by mergers etc.,
where what is now one railroad actually had to absorb multiple systems
belonging to the component roads. CSX, for instance, had to absorb
various special cases such as the Baltimore and Ohio colour position
lights; and NORAC generally has to cope with standard colour lights and
searchlights, Pennsylvania-derived position lights, and the more recent
colour position lights which are basically a colourised derivative of
the PRR non-colourised ones. Similarly UP, as a result of its absorption
of SP, which in turn had absorbed DRGW, has to have local rules within
some more overall system.

Mark is lucky or unlucky (depending which way you look at it) that he
has evidently only needed to learn the GCOR versions for some particular
roads. We are unlucky that he has chosen to generalise from that limited
experience to making statements about the whole of North America.

Eddie