Dark territory is a term used in the North American railroad industry to describe a section of running track not controlled by signals. Train movements in dark territory were previously handled by timetable and train order operation, but since the widespread adoption of two way radio communications these have been replaced by track warrants and direct traffic control, with train dispatchers managing train movements directly.[1] Today most dark territory consists of lightly used secondary branch lines and industrial tracks with speeds ranging between 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) and 40 miles per hour (64 km/h); however, there do exist a small minority of main lines that fall into the category.
In the UK and Australia the term applies to rail track where the signalling system does not pass the signal indications nor track occupancy back to a signal box. As such the position of trains is not visible to signallers, and so the track is "dark".