I know for the AWS (I talked about it a little in my video) but I didn't notice the distant signal thank you for that ! However, my very first question was not about red/green signal but speed limitations.
Normaly, on rails, when you have a speed limitation of 25 for example, a first signal says to you "be carefull there is a speed limitation of 25 in "X" miles" before the limitation is effective. I didn't notice something like this in the game. To be short, for limitations you have to signal, one to says to you that there is limitation soon, and the limitation itself. So if I don't use the helpers to show me where are the limitations, I can't know when and where the next limitation will be or may be I missed something that's why I ask to you. The problem is that you have to break before this limitation and not after, but to brake before we have to know there is a limitation next. Don't know if I am clear :)
For the evaluation yes, you should have penalty when you exceed the speed limit of a route only (for the speed). You can have penalty if you brake too hight (for the comfort of passengers) but it seems that in the game , we have penalties because our speed doesn't match the "expect speed" when breaking, that is bad.
Thank you ;)