In the olden days i.e about 30 to 40 years ago when Indian railways was expanding its territory across India, a signaling system was needed to facilitate the safe movement of trains. semaphores were initially used in London and crydon railway back in 1840's. when meter gauge trains were used in India, the use of semaphore signaling started to increase as it was efficient back then, when the tracks were signal line section and unelectrified. The track is divided into sections of at least one kilometer. The semaphore signal has two aspects i.e stop and clear, the stop aspect is indicated by red color which means that the section between the current signal and next signal is occupied by another train so the train is not allowed to enter that signal unless and until the aspect changes to green. In India, semaphores were used in rural parts of Gujarat, Rajasthan where meter gauge trains were widely operational. the image depicts the aspects of semaphore signals
Changing the aspects was done manually with the help of levers which required manual verification of section between two semaphores, this was done by contacting station masters of the stations in the section of semaphores. this signaling method required a lot of manpower and chances of human error were also very high. So slowly the use of semaphores started declining, and a new modern signaling system was introduced which is nowadays used widely as they are automatic or semi-automatics thus reducing human and personal errors to a huge extent. even today we find those semaphores lying abandoned as meter gauge tracks have been converted into broad gauge tracks and modern signaling system being used.
Meter gauge train with the semaphore signaling system.
some of the very few operational semaphores in Indian Railways.
The Semaphores ruled the railways for a very long period but had to be abandoned as they were limited only on single line tracks and required a lot of manpower, but as railways started increasing its network, it started doubling the number of tracks and hence semaphores were no longer used and were replaced with the modern signaling system.
Modern signaling sytem
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