No worries, Greg. You've come in when there are some sophisticated signal systems. Back in the TRS2004 days things were a lot simpler. tmodel1121 appears to have started around the same time I did, or shortly afterwards. Back then we had built-in simple signals that worked as was described above in his original post. The signals only looked as far as the next junction and at one point, up through TRS2009 or TS2010, that people made use of invisible junctions placed periodically to act as blocks on what would otherwise be a single track. This was to trick the signals into creating blocks so that long single track sections wouldn't cause the AI to run at half speed. The AI will drop to safe-handling, which is half the posted speed, and run as if he's running under yellow signals.
Starting with TS12 and up, Jointed Rail and others have created "smart" signals. These are scripted signals that see past the junctions and see each other. The only time a signal is directly affected by a junction is one that will interact with one such as an absolute signal (Type 04) If a junction is set against the driver, the Type 04 will drop to a red signal, and cause other signals in its line to fall down to various aspects. An AI driving through a permissive, will pass through those at reduced speed should that signal drop to a yellow. A permissive, or distant signal, will indicate the upcoming signal's aspect, or act as a warning in the case of a red. In the simpler times, this wasn't so.