Elsewhere I have raised a couple of little niggles about “the new” signals so I thought I would bring out my thoughts to a separate post.

In my 40 years of rail modelling (of which 30 have been M) I guess signals have been my Bête Noir yet they are something that fascinates me.

They used to be hideously out of scale and un prototypical with big lumps of relay and wiring visible.

They are the easiest thing on the layout for clumsy me, the cat and visiting little people to wipe out beyond repair in a second and whilst a led lamppost is a shame and easily replaced, 100euros plus of signal is tears and anger.

They are the worst example of sin for multi era modellers like myself. An Era I steamer trundling past a colour light signal takes some explaining especially if its Swiss!

Of all the fiddly things in model railways for clumsy fudgy fingered people like me track isolators and etc are up there amongst the leaders and the very latest signals don’t do away with the fiddly bits.

Whilst I know there are speed retard modules and I guess the Pc controlled suites can address the issue the normal ecky thump stop as a lok hits the isolated section is to me one of the worst sights in model railways. I have to say that for my modest means and layout I think about removing the isolated sections and simply driving the trains with the controller and obeying the signals.

This also overcomes another issue that I don’t know of an easy solution to. When a lok (or worse a railcar) hits and sits on the isolated section off go the lights, sound and everything else which is so annoying and un life like. I believe ESU do a sort of power store to keep the functions on in such situations but I don’t really know.

So I apologise for my previous outburst but when I see something four years old heralded as new and a diagram of a modest station with signals to the value of over 1000euros I get a little bit emotional!

The newer signals (newer being 4 years old as you said, as even the Stummi Forum folks indicate its just in the 'new items' book to remind folks that "hey, Märklin makes signals too").... do have some advantages but as you said, Signals (and I'll add overhead cantenary) are risk items for the clumsy. My initial thought is why not design a mag-safe type mounting - where the signal mast seats to the layout via a magnet and metal plate. Then if you bump it you knock it off its magnet/metal base, the slack in the cables just lets it tip over, and you can stand it up again. None of that helps if someone sits on the layout though, crushing it like Godzilla.

The modern signals have the control smarts pulled down into a box/module so the mast/light itself can be as filigree and accentuate to prototype as is reasonable.

The isolating section is just optional, you can run the signals as purely cosmetic; the isolation section allows folks using them to enforce stops in their control scheme to continue to do so, or they can act as an emergency stop (like real life sorta) in cases of a train running past the red. The loco should stop at the red before it ever gets to the isolated de-powered section, which I think should be AFTER the signal.

The Märklin ones are very spendy, due to the mfx auto-registration, and its built in digital decoder and backwards compatibility with the isolating section support and easy of installation on C-track.

For those who do for themselves with seperate component decoders that drive several signals, one can go with much cheaper 'display only' signals from the other manufactures.