Printed signal diagrams

[signalman]

It's great to finally see the lever kits will be shortly available.

In previous discussions on the beta version, I made the suggestion that if the kits come with a printed signal diagram, which it looks as if they will, the option to select a railway prototype would be nice.

NSW railways don't have yellow distant signals or levers. The levers were designated RED like any other signal lever. The signal arm colour was also red with a white chevron. If I were to have a lever frame on my layout, I would want the correct signal terminology for my prototype printed on the diagram.

I appreciate that the distant levers and arms are yellow in the program to make it easier whilst building the diagram, but I would still like the option when the printed diagram is done, for the correct colours etc to be displayed.

Is it still planned to have an option like this?

signalman

[RedFred]

Hi signalman.

The concept of templates for SigScribe4 seems like the way to go, so that a user could choose one to suit his/her railway of choice. We would try to make them reasonably easy to program so that the keener user could develop their own and hopefully be willing to share them with others.

As far as the actual signal diagram for a kit is concerned, these need to be drawn by the customer. It's all very well to have levers of a fixed scheme in SigScribe4, but, as you have pointed out, customers would not be so accommodating with something glaringly wrong on the final product.

For those with Windows systems, we recommend Serif® DrawPlus 4 which is an excellent free vector drawing program that can be downloaded from http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/index.asp . It would be good if there were some users willing to develop a few images and templates to help others with the drawing process. We could add these to a resource similar to the way that we are developing SigScribe4 examples for others to use. I'll post in the MODRATEC Lever Frame Kits forum a list of the dimensions for various Lever Frame diagrams to help anyone who's interested.

Of course, there are many drawing program to pick from, including the drawing features of Microsoft Word and Excel, but it certainly helps life if you choose one that uses real dimensions rather than pixels.

Keep the good ideas coming!

[ChrisF]

[quote="signalman"]

[Snip - ChrisF]

NSW railways don't have yellow distant signals or levers. The levers were designated RED like any other signal lever. The signal arm colour was also red with a white chevron. If I were to have a lever frame on my layout, I would want the correct signal terminology for my prototype printed on the diagram.

I appreciate that the distant levers and arms are yellow in the program to make it easier whilst building the diagram, but I would still like the option when the printed diagram is done, for the correct colours etc to be displayed.

Is it still planned to have an option like this?

signalman[/quote]

G'day Signalman and others on the Forum. I'm new here, but not new to signalling (check out my web site). My area of interest is the Western Australian Government Railways (WAGR).

I too would be in favour of the option of using RED as a colour for Distant Signal levers in MODRATEC leverframes as the WAGR did not differenciate between Distants and other signals as far as the colours of signal cabin levers went.

However, unlike NSWGR, the WAGR used both RED Distant Signal Arms and YELLOW Distant Signal Arms. The colour of the arms was changed over the period of one year (sometime in the 1940s I believe).

Cheers and "Line Clear" for now.
ChrisF.