I know it’s fake, but how accurate is it?

[David Boeschen]

I put in an eBay bid on this thing, called a ‘signal indications poster’. It has a reference to ‘UCOR November 1940’.

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It has ‘fake’ written all over it, especially since I saw almost the exact same thing, with slight variations, for a large number of railroads, when the ‘people who viewed this also viewed…’ came up. Let alone, a genuine prewar publication just plain wouldn’t look like that.

So my real question is, was this compiled from an actual rule book?

I think I’m going to retract my bid.

Ron Merrick

[Webmaster]

I saw the same item. It is definitely not railroad issue and I believe that the eBay seller mentioned that. As for its accuracy, I cannot say. Personally, I would rather have the actual scan of the appropriate rule book pages as opposed to this piece of slick paper.

[Bill Pollard]

The Uniform Code of Operating Rules, November 1, 1940, was/is a hardback grey clothbound rule book, issued by MP, RI and StLSW. I looked through my book at a few of the indications shown on the poster, and everything matches the rulebook, numbers, etc. So… yes, a reproduction, but it seems to be nicely done and a good summary of signal indications used at that time. The price is reasonable for what it is, though by the time you figure in the shipping, you could probably have purchased the original rulebook for less. Unlike earlier rulebooks, most of which had color printing for the various signal aspects, the 1940 issue was printed on the cheap, with only the letter of the color shown, rather than actual red-yellow-green indications, so in that regard, this poster is an improvement on the original. Also, the actual rulebook has exceptions for some lower quadrant indications used only by Rock Island, and this summary poster also includes those details. So… if you are called to pilot a MoP detour over the RI through Bauxite, Arkansas, you aren’t going to misinterpret that lower quadrant train order signal in front of the Bauxite depot. (If you get that call, however, let me know…)

Bill Pollard

[Author]

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