APPENDIX.
Although in describing the character of a dull man it is customary to say of him “that he scarcely knows his right hand from his left” yet, when it is considered that railway travellers are undoubtedly the cleverest portion of every community—indeed it is only very dull men or very dead ones that now-a-days travel in stage-coaches or in hearses—it is difficult to explain why millions of such travellers, highly intelligent on all other subjects, should have continued for so long a time, and should still continue, ignorant of important signals which are passing not only close on each side of, but immediately before, behind, and beneath them.
As the long dusty caravan full of human beings flying along its iron orbit skims across the surface of “merry England,” its guard is continually receiving police signals—stationary signals—semaphore signals—junction signals—auxiliary signals—train signals—special signals—and detonating signals.
Every human being in the train may also see or hear them, and yet—whether for weal or woe—they are an alphabet which none of us can read—symbols which none of us can interpret—short-hand writing which none of us can decipher!
As an appropriate appendix, therefore, to our attempt to delineate the practical working of a railway, we offer to such of our readers as may be anxious “to read as they run” an Official explanation, not only of every signal exhibited on the London and North-Western Railway, but of the various orders given to the servants of the Company, for the purpose of protecting passengers of all classes from accident, injury, imposition, or insult.
It surely appears advisable for all parties that orders of this description should be made known to the public.
We annex them, therefore, without other comment than the mere statement of the fact that By Authority of the Board of Directors they have been very carefully collected—selected from the Orders of almost all the other Railway Companies—and compiled by the Company’s “General Manager,” Captain Huish.
RULES AND REGULATIONS
FOR THE
CONDUCT OF THE TRAFFIC,
AND FOR THE
GUIDANCE OF THE OFFICERS AND MEN
IN THE SERVICE OF THE
London and North-Western Railway Company.
LONDON, JANUARY, 1849.