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From what I remember riding in the dome car of the "Texas Chief" between Temple and Cleburne TX and on the "Super Chief" between Albuquerque and Raton NM as well as trips by car in Texas along various Santa Fe mains before TCS, the old ABS had three red signals behind a train, then a yellow, and finally the greens. This was in the days of upper quadrant semophores. There were still quite a few of these well into the 1970's and a few still remain in New Mexico. The small Raton Pass Yahoo group has been discussing them lately. One of the guys posted a recent photo. the link is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RatonPass/. The signals are not expected to last much longer. The Southern Pacific line from Houston to Dallas had lower quadrant semophores along most of that route when I rode the 1984 "World'sFair Daylight" behind 4449. There were also some 3 color block signals and several stretches of CTC. In the mid '80's the SP replaced the old semophores with 2 or 3 lamp signals or searchlight signals, but otherwise kept the ABS system along with the hand-thrown infrequent passing sidings around here. The line between Flatonia and New Orleans is mostly ABS with various CTC islands. The UP hasn't seen fit to do any major upgrading. I live next to a stretch of double track that seems to be a favored meeting place in Houston. No wonder the "Sunset Limited" is often 12 to 14 hours late. The SP Dallas line had relatively little traffic compared with the Santa Fe, so their signals were approach-lit. I never really saw enough traffic to fully understand the SP practices. The Santa Fe mainlines in Texas have always had enough traffic in my lifetime for any lay person to casually observe the signal patterns, especially in places where I could see several signals in a row.
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