What is a "track light"?

Often I hear dispatchers on the scanner here around Metro Atlanta say "I've got a track light" at such and such a location. Can anybody enlighten me on what they mean?

At face value, it seems like the dispatcher is stating that he cannot get a section of CTC track to accept a route command or that it is showing falsely occupied.

What say thee, guys?

Often called a "track occupied light" or TOL. When a dispatcher sees one of these on his/her screen/board, while there are no trains that are supposed to be occupying that track, he/she will want a maintainer to go out and look for problems. Broken bond wires are often the problem.

Basically. something is interrupting the track circuit, the same way a train will when it occupies that section of track.

Broken rail, slide fence, switch left open, signal 'traffic' not turning, train lost its identification and/or forgotten about; it is all the same, a red or amber light, hence a track light, TOL, track indication. The embarassing ones are forgotten trains!!

"Uh, dispatcher, I found your track light, it is CSXT 666!" Very embarassing and usually they want to meet with you after the shift.

Ah, yes. Another way of saying "Murphy strikes again!" Problem is, there are so many things that [i]can[/i] go wrong. At least there's an indicator of when they [i]do[/i] go wrong.

Thanks, guys.