Working Semaphore Stop Light – 5 1/2 Feet Tall

This early metal casting project is the unfortunate result of an urgent need to build something out of poured metal without first doing the proper research into what I was making. Over the years I have managed to find a few images of real semaphore lights, and what I imagined they looked like was not really close to what I built. Anyway, it is what it is, and at least I can say that it is unique.

Out of fairness, this was made more than thirty years ago, shortly after I had caught a passing glimpse of a real one in a street scene of Spielberg’s “1941”. At this time there was no web, no Google images, and VCRs and laserdiscs were just starting to become available, so even the ability to replay a movie scene on your own tape or disk was yet to come. Even at antique shows that I frequented, such as the Chicagoland slot machine & antique advertising shows, I never saw any other than the common three-color stop lights in all the years I attended. Semaphore signals had to have been there at some time, but not when I visited.… Read the rest