Signs! Signs! Everywhere a Sign! - Western Passenger Roads

 It's been a while since my post on Western Freight Railroads, that that's due to the unfortunate situation that many of the commuter agencies that do operate track between Chicagoland and the West Coast put little or no effort into their interlocking signs.  This installment will attempt to cover the interlocking signs of Metra, the South Shore, Railrunner, Denver RTD, Coaster, Metrolink and Caltrain. 

Starting with METRA, it directly owns and operates those lines that were cast off from freight railroads where there was little or no freight service and/or a general bankruptcy and abandonment.  This consists of the Rock Island division, Electric Division and SouthWest Corridor. In all these cases it appears that METRA just stencils a barely legible name on the relay huts with black paint.



There is an exception to this on the Milwaukee District lines that are are jointly operated between METRA and Canadian Pacific. In this territory interlockings are provided with white on Metra blue signs.

In the Chicago Union Station area, Amtrak provides Conrail style white on blue signs, although the font isn't quite right.

One might have thought the Chicago South Shore and South Bend would use some sort of heritage inspired sign, however this is not the case with plain white black on white stick mounted signs located at the interlocking limits.

With its strong roots in transit instead of traditional railroads, Denver's RTD just labels its signals with a lever number and milepost.

Albuquerque RailRunner uses cute ATSF inspired  black border signs at interlockings as well as maintaining a few originals. 

 

 

While  LA Metrolink has gone in with the METRA style of not giving a damn.

However across the county line, San Diego Coaster has gone all in for a period correct ATSF black border type sign.

Last and least we have Caltrain that has gone in for the stencil method.  However the stencils are larger and more legible and Caltrain also provides secondary signs with the full interlocking name.arranged in a vertical format at every interlocking entrance.

Well that finishes my coverage of railroad "station" signs in the United States.  If I am able to get enough references I'll see if I can do the same for Canada.