Signal Diagrams

[Carrots]

Hi I'm not sure if anyone can help. I'm looking for Signal diagrams all across the country, and I'm not sure if these are easily accessible. I have noticed that train planners now seem to add many more signals as timing points with their own specific TIPLOCS within the train schedule. I would like to be able to locate where these signals sit on the line against the sectional appendix, line and direction but don't always find this easy. I can find some in Traksy and sometimes google earth but wondered if there was a document somewhere that i could access.

 

[The Planner]

Hi I'm not sure if anyone can help. I'm looking for Signal diagrams all across the country, and I'm not sure if these are easily accessible. I have noticed that train planners now seem to add many more signals as timing points with their own specific TIPLOCS within the train schedule. I would like to be able to locate where these signals sit on the line against the sectional appendix, line and direction but don't always find this easy. I can find some in Traksy and sometimes google earth but wondered if there was a document somewhere that i could access.

Unless you find someone that will supply them to you via the back door, they aren't in the public domain. The sectional appendix is very much diagrammatical and is at no real scale to plot against as well.

 

[mr_moo]

Agreed. You can get a lot from opentraintimes or traksy but that's probably the best source you're going to get, officially at leaast. If you have specific queries re certain areas then someone will probably assist, and you can find various cab ride videos on youtube through some areas which may show the signal IDs and types etc as you pass them, but actual scheme plans are restricted access.

Depending on how good you are with computers you may be able to look at the NR open data feeds and gain some useful info from there - this is what Tracksy and opentraintimes etc use as their source: https://www.networkrail.co.uk/who-we-are/transparency-and-ethics/transparency/open-data-feeds/

 

[jfollows]

There are some places, Signalling Record Society at https://www.s-r-s.org.uk/archivediagrams.php for example, but it's not unreasonable that you have to be a member to get access. https://signalbox.org/track-layouts/ also.

I don't have personal experience of either, but I've built up my own collection over the years and I'm able to post information here in response to specific requests, as are others, but I'm not able to post my entire collection!

 

[DanHST]

I use https://photos.signalling.org/ a lot for looking at signal box diagrams. It's got a good amount of fairly recent diagrams, and I think most have signal numbers on.

 

[edwin_m]

There's something called the Five Mile Line Diagrams which show signalling, gradient, speed etc with about five miles worth on one page, so at a smaller scale than the actual signalling plans. However, they may not be up to date and they seem to be rigorously protected by copyright - Network Rail isn't even allowed to give them out to their contractors. They are produced by Waterman Engineering and Environmental Consultants, who I assume came to some sort of PFI-type deal with NR where they recover the cost by licensing them to third parties. There is a list of subsribers in the file, which I probably can't reproduce for copyright reasons, but it includes many infrastructure engineers and contractors.

 

[jfollows]

An old FOI request (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/five_mile_diagrams) denied access to these Five Mile Line Diagrams.

 

[Freightmaster]

Hi I'm not sure if anyone can help. I'm looking for Signal diagrams all across the country, and I'm not sure if these are easily accessible. I have noticed that train planners now seem to add many more signals as timing points with their own specific TIPLOCS within the train schedule. I would like to be able to locate where these signals sit on the line against the sectional appendix, line and direction but don't always find this easy.

If you post a list of them on here, I'm sure people (myself included) will be happy to help
where they can.



MARK

 

[countryjoe]

The majority of Scotland MAS Signalling Diagrams are here:-

Glasgow Suburban Line's diagrams + Railway Rule Book - a Freedom of Information request to Network Rail Limited

I am after the diagrams of the routes operated by ScotRail stated bellow Glasgow North Electrics (North clyde line) + All branches Argyle Line Ayrshire Coast Line Cathcart Circle Lines Croy Line Cumbernauld Line Inverclyde Line Maryhill Line Motherwell-Cumbernauld Line Paisley Canal Line Shotts...

www.whatdotheyknow.com

Note that some will be out of date by now.

Somewhere on the web (not FOI) there used to be Northern Trains (North West Area) Driver Training Manuals with the Signalling Layouts as above, but I can't find them now.

As for 5-Mile Diagrams, I do have an old set on CD, but they just cover station areas (or within 5 miles of a station area) but nothing in-between.
They were never really any use pre Waterman Eng.

 

[takno]

Traksy in a lot of the country is essentially guesswork based on the sectional appendices, analysis of the train movements and feedback from users. Copyright around the source materials can be complex, possibly unjustifiably so, but that's the modern fractured railway for you), and that makes sharing diagrams complex, even though the information they contain is in itself blatantly not copyright. I think the short answer is that you aren't going to get this information

 

[godfreycomplex]

Try Simsig, the manual for each simulator has a “signal number plan” in them

These are, with deep respect , absolutely not safety critical and not to be relied upon under any real world circumstances, (and also they don’t cover everywhere), but they’re free and in the public domain and if you’re just looking for your own amusement they are very useful

 

[Chris Hamilton]

A great deal of Network Rail documentation is covered by Government processes for information classification, and anything marked as “Official” cannot be distributed outside the organisation without permission.

As a Signalling Tech, I have access to pretty much all signalling diagrams, but if it were found out that I had distributed all or any part of them to outside parties, I would face disciplinary action. Most of what is on them is either meaningless to someone without training, or no more than can be gleaned by staring out the window of a slow moving train, but that’s the nature of any schematic really.

Where I maintain a local copy (for when I go out of mobile signal areas, easily done on my patch), it must be on a Network Rail secured device, and where stored in the Cloud, it must be on the one service approved by the company. Even sharing of docs among staff has to be done via our Teams service, cloud sharing, or internal email. WhatsApp (and its ilk) is very much banned, which often makes me wonder why some other public sector employees (!?!?!) get away with using it.

As someone mentioned before, the 5 mile diagrams were useful, but these days don’t seem to be well maintained, and are covered by copyright as they were produced by an outside party. We also use simplified TAP drawings for maintenance, but those are also produced externally and are copyright controlled.

My reference points are mainly the Sectional Appendix (freely available, but not of use to your purpose), and M12 diagrams, which show an overview of all signalling equipment in an interlocking area and where to find the associated location cases. M12s (and the slightly simpler M1s, which just show the layout of equipment on the track, but without the location case data) would probably be what you are after, but as I say, anyone found to be distributing them would be in serious hot water, and there are thousands of them (one for every single interlocking in the country).

There is no single central repository or atlas of signals and their locations.

 

[Adrian Barr]

As mentioned in post #3, the opentraintimes maps show signal numbers and cover many of the areas which are busy or complicated enough to have individual signal numbers specified in timings.

For example Doncaster has timing points / tiplocs set up for signals D298, D1490, D249, D254, D275, D1489 which are all visible on the relevant map - https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps/signalling/ecm4#T_DONC