Stop Signs

[jerryl]

  Maybe some of you newer modelers can't remember, but back in the day, stop signs were yellow, not red.  It also seems to me that they were mounted lower than the red ones are today. Does anyone know what the proper height was for the yellow signs?   Jerry

[Nathan]

When I was young we did a lot of traveling by car.  Every state, some times even just a different city, had not only signs at different heights, but even different colors and shapes.

My Dad got into a traffic accident in the early 1950's because not only was the stop sign a different color, but it was below another sign on the same post.

[jerryl]

You are probably right. I put the signs near the height they are here in NJ & they looked high compared to what they used to be here. You can almost walk under the ones today.....seems the yellow ones from the 50's were a lot lower.

[pdlethbridge]

when I first learned to drive in the 60's, Massachusetts had a variant on the stop sign called a through stop. A car stopped at the sign could go and the first 2 cars behind him could go but the next would have to stop. I remember that the signs were very low.

[Jim Banner]

Does anyone remember when the highway stop signs switched from black letters on yellow to white letters on red?

Have you ever seen a stop sign on the railroad?  There is one here in Saskatoon.  Up to about 1990, it was the word STOP in black letters on a white, horizontal rectangle.  Then it was changed to a red octagon with no lettering.  In both cases, it was on the fireman's side of the track.  I am not sure if the sign is there because the CN branch line crosses a road where there have been a lot of accidents with trains or because it crosses the CP secondary mainline just the other side of the road.

Jim

[jerryl]

 I did look this up finally & found that the Yellow Stop signs were that color for greater visibility even tho it didn't comply with the universal color for caution (Yellow) They couldn't use red because they were very hard to see at night.
In the 50s someone figured out how to make reflective paint.  The signs were then changed to Red. 
  Just remember, if you are modeling the transition era, you should probably be using Yellow Stop signs.

[mhampton]

Road signs were raised for safety reasons.  Most of the time when a car hits a sign post, the sign becomes detached.  If that occurs now, the detached sign will clear the roof of most cars.  They used to just come through the windshield with potentially deadly results.  Nobody wants to lose their head because of a road sign accident.

[NarrowMinded]

Here in the States we also Used to have Speed limit Signs White with Black Letters and then Below it a smaller Black with White letters Usually 10mph less, one was the Day limit the other the night, they started to disappear in the late 1970's and were replaced with just white with blk.

NM

P.S. I have seen a small modern stop sign on a line that runs through Redondo Beach/Torrance Ca. next time I see it  I'll have to take a picture. It

[Paul M.]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't 1953 the year they officially changed it to red-and-white?

For those that lived through it, how long did it take for the yellow stop signs to be phased out?

[NarrowMinded]

I grew up in redondo beach Ca. and I remember looking at the new sign at the end of my street after they changed it, had to be the late 60's  I had not thought of that until this post. I'm sure major streets were changed sooner.

NM

[jerryl]

  Yes, I think they went to yellow in 1953 in NJ.  So if you model steam or early transition, you should probably go with yellow.

[ebtbob]

Paul,

      If 1953 was the offical year for the switch from yellow to red stop signs,  then it took quite some time to the change.   I was only 4 years old in 1953 and remember very little from that time,   but I definetly remember the yellow signs,  so it was a few years after 1953 when the change took place here in s.e. Pennsylvania.

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

      If 1953 was the offical year for the switch from yellow to red stop signs,  then it took quite some time to the change.   I was only 4 years old in 1953 and remember very little from that time,   but I definetly remember the yellow signs,  so it was a few years after 1953 when the change took place here in s.e. Pennsylvania.

How about that! So the yellow Stop signs I occasionally see on accessory racks in hobby shops really are prototypical!

I was born in Central Pennsylvania in 1958. I have no memory of Stop signs as other than red octagons with white letters.

[Jim Banner]

Around 1953 sound about right.  But they didn't change them all at once, at least not in Alberta.  There were still a few around on back roads in 1963.  Just like we still occasionally see the old wooden 60^o crossbucks at RR crossing with the words "RAILWAY CROSSING" on them, even though the white with red border and no words 90^o type have been around for at least 10 years.

Jim