Notes

~steamby51 asked me to post some pictures of the semaphores in Simpelveld, so here I do. To the left, we have what I guess is a distant signal on the way from Simpelveld to Schin op Geul. The other is a home signal at the exit of track 1 of Simpelveld station.

I’m afraid don’t know much about dutch signaling. Horizontal means danger (stop) while 45° upwards means clear, which is the standard more or less everywhere, except with the weird british lower-quadrant signals, of course. The 2 in the triangle on the left most likely either marks the beginning of a speed restriction or warns the driver that a speed restriction is ahead, with a top speed of 20 kph. Notice the little arrow on the right one. In the Netherlands, as in Germany, trains drive by default on the right if a line is double-tracked and signals are positioned to the right of the track. This was not possible here, so the arrow indicates the track this signal belongs to (although it ought to be clear; it can hardly belong to the footpath to the left).