The other kind of signal we have in the game are path signals, and path signals are more complex, kind of smarter signals, and this is where the video gets confusing.

Path signals are not really needed in the vast majority of the cases, as I said before, block signals take care of most cases, but if you have, like, bidirectional traffic on a single line, or if you have complex intersections or something like that, you'll likely need, or at least benefit from, path signals.

So what do they do exactly?

What do path signals do?

Okay, so path signals reserve a path through a block.

Now, okay, that's what they do in essence, but what does that actually mean?

If we take this complicated intersection segment, you'll see that all the tracks are actually contained in one block.

So all these signals that you see are actually just all block signals, and this big section in the middle is actually just one entire block.

Therefore, if any train enters this block, no matter where it is in the block or where it's going, it will stop all trains from entering the entire block because the block is technically occupied, right?

So you can see this train entering from the side is slowing down to a stop.

It doesn't make a complete stop because, you know, the other train does exit the block quick enough, but you can see that the train was slowing down for the stop and its block signal did not allow it to enter this block until the other train had left completely.

even though those two trains were never going to collide anyway.

Can you sort of see the problem here?

Path signals, however, will find a path through a block and reserve that specific path only.

This means that other paths within the block are still free to be used by other trains, so long as their paths will not intersect with the reserved path.

And the ultimate outcome here is what you see, that you can have multiple trains within the same block, so long as they're using different paths.

So this example that I showed, you know, does work with block signals and path signals.

It works better with path signals.

But, you know, it still works with block signals.

But there are situations as you build up your train network that you might find only path signals can solve certain logistic problems.

And, you know, as you build up, you'll sort of start to learn these skills yourself.

And then you can experiment with it and you'll find solutions in that way.