My History Modeling Signals

I've had signals on my layout ever since I started with HO. I remember being in junior high school and building a signal bridge with balsa strips, washers, and red and green grain of wheat bulbs that I controlled with a DPDTY switch. My more modern evolution begins with the start of this layout project at an earlier home in 1988. I saw an article by Gary D Petersen, "Simplified CTC Signals", in the July 1988 MR. Here is an image from part of a page in that article:

Here is a switch machine block I built following the article:

I've replaced almost all of these on my current layout, when I switched to Tortoises, but this is an example of what could be done with the earlier technology. Notice that I filled in a lot of the space around the machine with silicone calk to keep it from shaking itself out of alignment. Another problem was that the machine also eventually shook loose solder connections.

Here's a photo that includes some of the electronic gear that went under the layout:

And a photo of the very crude CTC machine under construction following the Gary Petersen MR article:

I had a fantasy when we moved to this house of having a CTC board with a dispatcher in another room, but I began to realize how much wire this would require, and I also began to realize that realistically, it's hard to put together an operating group, so I dropped it. However, my layout does have signals:

Here is the electronic equipment that controls this signal.