EM2
Established Member
If you're familiar with the Thomas The Tank Engine stories, you will probably know this one.
To pay Percy back for playing tricks on them, Gordon and James tell him about 'backing' signals. When he's out on the line, Percy comes to a semaphore signal which is 'on', i.e. the arm is horizontal. On Sodor, the signals are lower quadrant; the arm lowers to mean 'proceed'.
In this case, the arm goes up, and Percy interprets this as 'go back'. His driver explains what it really means, and Percy feels rather silly.
But...the Rev. Awdry never explains in the book what it *does* mean. I've come across three-position semaphores, where horizontal is 'on', angled up is 'caution', and vertical is 'clear', but never a combined lower and upper quadrant (which is what is described, in effect).
As the Rev was adamant that all the incidents on the books are based on real life incidents, what exactly could this signal be, and what would its indications mean?
To pay Percy back for playing tricks on them, Gordon and James tell him about 'backing' signals. When he's out on the line, Percy comes to a semaphore signal which is 'on', i.e. the arm is horizontal. On Sodor, the signals are lower quadrant; the arm lowers to mean 'proceed'.
In this case, the arm goes up, and Percy interprets this as 'go back'. His driver explains what it really means, and Percy feels rather silly.
But...the Rev. Awdry never explains in the book what it *does* mean. I've come across three-position semaphores, where horizontal is 'on', angled up is 'caution', and vertical is 'clear', but never a combined lower and upper quadrant (which is what is described, in effect).
As the Rev was adamant that all the incidents on the books are based on real life incidents, what exactly could this signal be, and what would its indications mean?