Issue 6: Signal failure
The following answer was published in Issue 6 (Sep/Oct 2004) of e-motion magazine.
Sometimes my train is stopped at a red signal and the guard states over the public address that it is due to "signal failure". What does this term actually mean?
There can be many causes of a signal failure, but the result is that the signal always "fails safe", which means that it goes to red so that the trains cannot pass it in the normal way. When this happens, signalling staff have to identify the cause of the fault and then trains are normally manually signalled past at caution until a repair can be made. This obviously slows up the flow of trains and causes delays and disruptions.
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