Signaller

A signaller or signaleer in the armed forces is a specialist soldier, seaman or airman responsible for military communications. Signallers, aka Combat Signallers or signalmen or women, are commonly employed as radio or telephone operators, relaying messages for field commanders at the front line (Army units, Ships or Aircraft), through a chain of command which includes Field headquarters and ultimately governments and non government organisations. Messages are transmitted and received via a communications infrastructure comprising fixed and mobile installations.

Duties

In the past, signalling skills have included the use of: Heliograph, Aldis lamp, semaphore flags, "Don R" (Dispatch Riders) and even carrier pigeons.

Modern signallers are responsible for the battlefield voice and data communication and information technology infrastructure, using a variety of media. All types of wire (line), satellite and ionospheric radio communication are employed. These include common radio systems such as HF/VHF radio and UHF/SHF radio (operated in line of sight, for example). Cellular radio and telephone systems such as TETRA are also becoming common.

Signalman (rail)

A signalman or signaller is an employee of a railway transport network who operates the points and signals from a signal box in order to control the movement of trains.

History

The first signalmen, originally called Railway Policemen (leading to the nickname of 'Bobby'), were employed in the early 19th century and used flags to communicate with each other and train drivers, and hourglasses for the purpose of Time Interval Working between stations.

Additional duties

It was a signalman's duty to check each train that passed his signal box, looking for the red tail lamp exhibited on the trailing vehicle, the sighting of which confirmed that the train was still complete, and thus the section was clear.

Each train movement was logged, by hand, in a Train Register Book, and it was normal practice to provide a special desk to support this sizeable book. As well as train movements, every communication between signalmen and adjacent signal boxes via bell codes (when accepting trains or dealing with a token) was logged.