Railroading is a field which is host to many lost arts. Steam locomotive firemen, mechanics, and engineers are precious few. Today, they amaze us with a wealth of skills and knowledge that the world is fortunate to have not already lost. This knowledge and skill, the accumulation of the industry's generations and itself history, is being passed down in disturbingly narrower lines.
Even fewer people than are familiar with steam locomotives, probably, are those who are as familiar with railroad semaphore signals. In many railroad museums can be found fully functional steam locomotives running past and ignoring dead signals put up for display. Yet, even as the steam locomotive has been entirely replaced as the iron workhorse, semaphore lamps have not all been extinguished from revenue trackage in the United States. Like unto the steam locomotive, interest in these signals remains.
|
