P1-a or P2-b Classification Lights

Could someone out there in rule-land please answer a question for me on class lights?
I am not sure if the Pyle style markers used on the top-front of the loco had just two lenses or more.
If the lens to the front was clear-white, what would be the color used to the outside (left right) of the loco.

I am building a 3" gauge, 1/19th scale model of the P1-a and I am trying to figure out how to build the class lights and I would like to get the colors right.
The Pyle light will not be movable so the white to the front will be the norm. I just need the color to the side.

Thanks in advance.

Jerry Kelley

On classification lights, the color (white or green) is displayed to the front and to the side. The outside lenses are CLEAR. When the rules prescribe display of green, an inside green lens is rotated into position, to display green behind the clear lenses.

These lamps ALWAYS displayed WHITE or GREEN: never both (one each), random modelmakers and other revisionists notwithstanding.

don't think the P2b had any marker or classification lights.

The answer is Yes and No.

NYC's P-Motors did carry electric marker lights, which when used in a light engine movement, were displayed on the pilot beam. By the 1960's they had mostly - but not completely - disappeared. These lamps had 4 lenses (1 red and 3 yellow).

Classification lights, so far as I can tell, had never been in use following their 1950's conversion (to P-2) and reassignment to the Electric Division. My earlier post was principally intended to correct the widely misunderstood usage of green and white on classification lights generally.

Perhaps someone with broader knowledge of CUT can add something.

The widespread use of rules 251 & 550 on the mainlines in the middle to late 1950's made the use of Classification Lights unnecessary. The rules simply stating that trains were run with respect to signal indications that will supersede the superiority of trains. With no superiority of trains with respect to each other there is no need to display class lights.

It should be noted these rules and their application was the beginning of what evolved into the 450 rules and what we called on the NYCS a Traffic Control System (TCS)...very similar to what is called CTC for the purposes of train operation but quite different from that technology. TCS may have???, not certain, been a proprietary term of manufacture GRS while CTC was the marketing term used by competitor US&S for its system of operating trains by signal indication.

I believe cTc (with lower-case c's) was a registered trademark of GRS. The equivalent of cTc on the PRR (which of course bought nearly everything from US&S) was shown officially as Operation of Trains by Signal Indication with Remote-Controlled Interlockings (individual interlocking stations being made necessary by a provision in the labor agreement by which dispatchers were prohibited from transmitting orders directly to train crews). Until the agreement could be modified (and I think it was, later) only a block operator could cause a signal to be displayed.