Bob,
After a lot of interruptions a block of time allowed me to investigate at least some of what you have described.
Unfortunately, I am not able to duplicate what you are describing with your icons. You appear to be using custom icons which would make it difficult for us to just examine an uploaded copy of your panel xml file unless you also uploaded all of those icons.
Normally we request one to upload the panel into the "Files/Problems being worked on" folder and report back to the thread with a link to the new entry or at least a unique name that we can find to tie it to the message. Additional files in different folders adds some complexity to that effort. Not impossible, but extra bookkeeping is required at both your end and at ours.
But before going down that route, there is an "issue" that involves your custom signal icon file location. Please note that this issue may or may not have anything to do with the symptoms that you have described. It is also possible that you have developed a coping mechanism that enables you to do what we always recommend JMRI users to never do.
The first icon in your list is identified with this line:
<held url="program:resources/icons/_RJE/Signals/SearchErrorFlash.gif" degrees="0" scale="1.0">
Which indicates that your custom icon, and all the others listed, reside in a folder named _RJE/Signals and is a subfolder of the JMRI distribution folder. Everything in the distribution folder will get overwritten during the next version update.
It is strongly recommended that each user keep all custom files in a folder that does not get overwritten. Depending on how one uses those custom files the protective process can be as simple as creating a subfolder of one's JMRI user's folder with something like "resources/icons/_RJE/Signals/" in your case. If the custom files are to be shared then one might use something like a Dropbox location. Often there is some choice that fits one's needs but is in between these extremes.
Once that folder is defined, then the options and preferences dialogs within JMRI and the xml files saved will have replaced "program:" with "preference:" or with "profile:" or with "settings:" or maybe a more complicated explicit local hardware or network name. JMRI will then default to that folder location. Numerous other message threads on this list provide details. Save copies with different names early and often as you make modifications.
My apologies for this long digression.
It will be either late this evening or tomorrow before I can get back to trying to duplicate your symptoms.
Cliff
