> Additionally, when the engine and tender, facing uphill, return, tender first, from the assignment, the lamps become classification lights > and indicate the engine/tender's status as an authorized movement, probably showing white as an extra move. > > Randy Brown - - -------------------------------------------------------------- > I sent Al some model pics off list, but as to the marker lights . . . > > They were not used, as far as I know, in normal service unless the engine was serving as a pusher behind the caboose, IOW, at the rear end > of the train, or was running light outside of yard limits. Confirmation or correction welcomed. > > SGL Marker lamps were normally carried in a box or out of sight on the tender deck unless they had been placed in their brackets at the rear corners of the tender to indicate the rear of a train. Any marker lamp, lighted by night or dark by day, indicated the rear of a train, and that the train was complete. They showed red to the rear and yellow to the front and sides (green in Canada and some US railroads) when the train was occupying a main track, with some other combinations when running against the current of traffic. The markers on a steam locomotive running in reverse, light or at the rear of a train, were placed in brackets on the pilot beam. Classification lamps (combined with flags by day) were always placed on the smokebox front of the locomotive, even when it was operating in reverse. Classification lamps not lighted indicated nothing. Green flags (and green lamp lighted by night) indicated that another section of the same schedule was following. White indicated an extra train (a train operating with no time-table schedule). A principle difference is that the mere presence of marker lamps indicated the rear of a train, but classification lamps had to be lighted (and accompanied by flags in daylight) in order to convey a valid signal. The PRR did it differently, but that's off-topic. Some railroads carried both green and white classification lamps on the smokebox front for convenience, with the flags stored in the cab. They would light and mount the correct lamps on the higher brackets and put up the corresponding flags whenever they needed them. The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List Sponsored by the ELH&TS http://www.elhts.org ------------------------------
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