You are thinking about classic heavy trains, with signalling meant both for long freight trains and long passenger trains capable to 200 km/h speeds, not to mention high speed rail.
But one could go down one step and use a tram-like service, in that case, if there's an human driver, the signalling is going to be the same used for cars. If you go with automatic self driving systems the signalling is going to be more complex, but not much more than an elevator, and having some door on station to prevent people going on the tramway.
A tram could have problem with steep rises, but you could solve this building a trolleybus like system, that is less efficient than a tram but it's still more efficient to have a bunch of cars.