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by timetable and train order operation, but since the widespread adoption of two way radio communications these have been replaced by track warrants and direct traffic control, with train dispatchers managing train movements directly. Today most dark territory consists of lightly used secondary branch lines and industrial tracks with speeds ranging between and ; however, there do exist a small minority of main lines that fall into the category. The term can also apply to automatic signaled lines where trains are running against the normal flow of traffic.