The build of the Peco Signal has gone as far as it is going for now... It comes in kit form and comprises...

An instruction sheet

Some white plastic parts for the pillar and the signal arms (you get a choice between Home or Distant)...

Some dark brown parts for the finial, cap, hinge brackets for the signal arm and the lever, lever weight, ladder platform, lamp and lamp base.

A black plastic fret holding the ladder...

A brass etch holding - the lens holder, 3 washers, platform railings, ladder supports, 4 lugs, 2 different lever arms, an 'S', an 'O' and 'X' to fix on the arm for specialist use - seeing the brass fret caused a minor panic never before having worked with brass...

A stiff steel wire to operate the signal arm, two black steel pins to use as pivots, red orange and blue translucent plastic lens material... (Note: Do keep the sprues as later they can come in handy...)

When most of the parts are put together - (The ladder and platform will be assembled and attached later when the signal is eventually placed on the layout) it all looks a bit like this...

Just a banged up first attempt at making a signal...

The instructions, such as they are, needed some effort to interpret, and even so I am not sure everything is where it is meant to be - the good news is that it works...

First you glue the post together and add some parts and drill some holes, then paint..

Painting proved to be a near disaster - Some humbrol primer was first applied which then refused to dry properly.

After much thought a decision was arrived at to paint over it using spray paint from a can - some satin white - under the mistaken impression that it would somehow come out looking smoothe...

However the result resembled a cracked crocodile skin and clearly needed to be removed.

This was done using lacquer thinners - which unfortunately also had the effect of melting the plastic - especially the dark brown softer plastic bits... Acteone was then employed to clean and rescue what was left of the signal post - but at the time it was becoming quite a comedy - leaving formless blobs and sticky cloth fibres where the bearing plates had been glued on.

Then on cue as a finale, the finial dropped off...

Not to be deterred I set about trying to rescue what could be rescued... so...

The fibres were removed, the post and attachments cleaned, the finial reattached and the assembly re-primed (using another brand of primer), dried, sanded, made smoothe again...

This time Humbrol Satin White (130) was used to paint the post plus attachments...

Using a piece of discarded sprue, a new bearing plate for the signal lever arm was improvised.

The pivot plate for the signal arm, which also melted into a formless shape, was redesigned and rebuilt using a tube to act as the bearing for the signal arm pivot - this was fashioned from a piece of cable insulation glued onto what remained of the plate - this cable covering also served to make some essential spacers.

The signal arm was painted using humbrol red matt (153) paint as the humbrol red gloss (220) paint was far too thin cover anything as it came out of the can - it was used painted over the much thicker matt paint to get a gloss effect.

The black parts were painted with humbrol black satin (85)... (not much to say about it as the paint performed as expected.)

After much fiddling a working signal appeared - instead of looking smart and brand new, it now looks a bit battered - like it has been around for 50 years - which is probably more prototypically correct...

That perhaps is the beauty of modelling railways - your mistakes can only improve things!