Signalling - Sos

So one thing I've been running into recently is red signals. It's a bit abrupt going from a green to red in a matter of a few hundred yards with no warning signals to alert me. This gives me no time to slow down and stop and I've failed several services because of this. I've been trying to memorise where abouts they are for the particular timetable I'm driving but am struggling.

Is this a known issue/problem others are having or am I just unlucky?

On a separate note the route seems pretty dead a lot of the time, it would be nice to see more locos going about their shifts and services too.

 

Keep an eye out on distant signals. They are a good indicator.

 

Except that there are no distant signals, where there should be. Notoriously, there is no distant at all between Speke and Ditton Junction - in fact the light signal is always green - and then you suddenly are confronted with a Stop just before Ditton with no warning and only about 250 yards visibility. This is a design error; somebody missed out a distant which unquestionably would have been there.

 

This is a bit of an ongoing discussion.
Effectively SoS is a "new game" primarily because there isn't the relevant stock to fill in the gaps in the timetable so DTG have two options:

1. put the jubilee and 8F to work on services they didn't run - thus annoying the purists who want everything to be as it was back in the day
2. don't put more services on but then leave large swathes of route with few services (or empty yards and factories etc)

In the past (SEHS to be exact) DTG put services in using incorrect trains and got blasted for it, and since then there's been polls asking whether the community want proper trains running proper services but emptier lines, or fill the lines up even though you might end up with twenty of the same train pulling services it never ran

 

There is a bug with some of the colour light signals. They don’t talk to the semaphores.

One that always gets me is on the downhill approach to Ditton Junction from Runcorn. Two green colour lights and then you slam into a red semaphore.
It’s the same on NTP.

It seems strange to me as surely they’d be coded exactly the same, just one has to change a light and one has to play an animation.

Like others have said if you see a distant signal at ‘caution’ then one of the next two semaphores could be at ‘danger’.

 

Is it always two or can a distant signal also control more than two signals?

 

I think it depends on how large the block section is, I did a run yesterday and near Edgehill I was given a distant at caution, went through two or three greens and then the next distant was at caution as well and the red signal was beyond that, Luckily I'd been driving cautiously so was able to stop in plenty of time.

 

Not really sure. There’s so many bugs I struggle to tell what’s correct and what’s not.

 

FROM WHAT I KNOW (possibly incomplete)
There's a different between a "distant signal" and a "home signal"
A distant signal is usually accompanied by a main signal (ie you have a red bar above and a yellow bar underneath), the yellow bar may indicate an upcoming signal at danger and this is likely the next signal or signal group (ie slow down the next signal is likely stop)
A home signal is often the first signal you see from an upcoming signal box and acts for the whole run of that signal box (ie ANY of the signals controlled by that box on your set route is at danger) This could be two signals, it could be ten but when you passed that home signal there was something ahead of you
You can also have permanent signals at danger which are actual sign boards with the yellow bar painted on. These indicate you will ALWAYS be expected to stop at the next signal or board

Unfortunately it's another case of "in the UK the driver would be expected to know where the signals are, how many signals each box controls and probably the service pattern of the trains ahead so would already know to act accordingly"

 

Thanks- Good to know