Making Ground Signals

Model Railways in general need some form of signalling system although many of us install them or put dummies in place. Here is an ultra cheap method of representing signals, namely ground signals, on your layout.

On my railway, I had the need for a “fouling peg” system which could be readily seen by visiting operators yet look as though they are meant to be there. The seeds for this idea were sown when my wife bought me a set of Lifelike dummy signals for the layout which included a couple of ground signals. However these are fairly fragile at the base and one spectacular derailment broke two of them when one of my visitors threw the wrong point under a moving train.

I needed a few “fouling peg” type signals anyway for other areas on my layout so I took the idea to make my own but needed something a little more forgiving of such mistakes. Searching around the scrap box came up with a few spare Kadee coupler pockets (not too necessary when you have Athearn cars) and some scraps of styrene which many of us should have. Cutting down the pocket to approximate size I simply backed it up with a piece of .020” styrene and glued it onto a styrene base. A dab of white and black paint with a Yellow dab where the lens would be to represent “Caution” and voila one ground signal.