Materialdesign: semaphore

[MerlinMalone]

Can there be icons for railway signals - both lights and mechanical (semaphore)? I'm looking at using icons for user interfaces in the rail industry. Thanks

[MrGrigri]

Something like this?

[MerlinMalone]

Thanks - good, and useful for other things but that's more of a railroad crossing. I was thinking something more like this

[MrGrigri]

Please refer to #4075. I'm going to rename this to railroad-light and you can direct your concerns for a railroad boom-gate there.

[JamesCoyle]

That's not a barrier. It's a signal.

[MerlinMalone]

A boom gate?

[MerlinMalone]

Ah, I see the confusion. No, it's not a gate. It's a semaphore signal:

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/old-railway-semaphore-signals-23359445.jpg

[MrGrigri]

I believe that a 'semaphore' will be way too niche for this project. I'm going to keep it open as an issue to add a railroad-light.

[GreenTurtwig]

Railway semaphores are still used in parts of some countries, so I'd say it's worth adding.

On the lights, a lot of countries use the St Andrew's cross and two flashing red lights to indicate a train passing, so that'd be worthwhile to add.
However some countries like the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, e.t.c. have slightly or even completely different lights. For example in France they only have a single flashing light, meanwhile in the UK and Ireland there's an amber followed by two flashing red lights.

[MrGrigri]

So, is the semaphore used for train/vehicle crossing, or is it just used for train engineers for understanding which tracks are available? Please forgive me for not understanding the railroad industry ;)

[GreenTurtwig]

Just train drivers. Stop signals tell the driver if the line ahead is clear or not and distant signals tell them the state of upcoming stop signals.

[MrGrigri]

Ok, I'll rename this issue to semaphore, and then create a new issue for railroad-light.

[MrGrigri]

For reference, here is the Wikipedia article on semaphores. To be honest, I believe we only need a general representation of a semaphore and not it's different states, as that could be quite complicated because of regions.