History
Historically, each private railway company designed and used its own signals. However, during the First World War the interpenetrations of trains between networks had been multiplied. It thus became necessary to create a new unified signals specification. A commission has thus been created in May 1926, directed by Eugène Verlant of the PLM.
The Verlant commission submitted its report at the end of 1927. The new code of signals received the approval of the Ministry of public labour August 1st, 1930. Conversion to the Verlant code was completed only at the end of 1936, except on the network of Alsace-Lorraine where it was completed later, because of the very particular character of pre-existing signalling.
The Verlant code was very innovative, based on simple principles:
- Mainly based on color light signalling, which thereafter simplified the installation of the automatic block;
- Light signals used three basic colors: red (stop), yellow (to announce stop or limited speed), green (clear). This code of colors was already applied by many foreign companies. It was also applied for the road signals;
- Simplification of the signals: is presented only the most imperative indication (except in special cases).
Read more about this topic: French Railway Signalling
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“I believe my ardour for invention springs from his loins. I can’t say that the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.”
—Caresse Crosby (1892–1970)