Requirement
5. Six kinds of sign, all of them what you see from the road
Required
No menu here: all six lettered parts are required. Everything in requirement 5 is what a driver or a person on foot sees at or near a crossing, which is what separates it from requirement 6. Both the APPEARANCE and the MEANING are asked for.
Notes and warnings
Note. REQUIREMENTS 5 AND 6 ARE ONE AFTERNOON, AND THEY SPLIT BY AUDIENCE RATHER THAN BY SUBJECT. Everything in requirement 5 is what YOU see, from a road or a footpath: passive and active signs, the devices at the crossing, the markings on the road, the signs before it, the signs along the property, and the signs at the crossing itself. Everything in requirement 6 is what the TRAIN CREW sees and hears. Ten lettered parts across the two, no overlap anywhere, and one body of reading covers both, so there is no reason to come back to it a fortnight later. Neither requirement blocks the other and the badge states no order, which is why no arrow joins them. NOTE THAT BOTH APPEARANCE AND MEANING ARE ASKED FOR THROUGHOUT REQUIREMENT 5, so a list of names has done half the job.
What this is made of
Where this step comes from
- Railroading Merit Badge Requirements (Merit Badge Hub, last modified 2025-12-15), Requirement 5 · The requirement asks for the appearance and the meaning of each of its six categories.