RAILWAY SIGNALS.
The history of railway signals is a curious page in the annals of practical science. For some years signals seem scarcely to have been dreamt of. Holding up a hat or an umbrella was at first sufficient to stop a train at an intermediate station. At level crossings the gates had to stand closed across the line of rails, and on the top bar hung a lamp to indicate to drivers that the way was blocked. In 1839, Colonel Landman, of the Croydon line, said that he should avoid the danger at a junction during a fog by going slowly, tolling a bell, beating a drum, or sounding a whistle. The first junction signal was denominated a lighthouse. The difficulties attending junctions may be judged of by the fact that when the Bolton and Preston line was ready for opening it was agreed that no train should attempt to enter or leave the North Union line at Euxton junction
within fifteen minutes of a train being due on the main line which might interfere with it. The movable rails at junctions had to be removed by hand and fixed into position by hammer and pin. Mr. Watts, engineer to the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway, is believed to have been one of the first to use the tapering movable switch. One of Mr. Watts’s men invented the back weight, another designed the crank, while a third suggested the long rod. These improvements were all about the year 1846. The first fixed signal set up at stations was an ordinary round flag pole having a pulley on the top, upon which was hoisted a green flag to stop a train and a red one to indicate danger on the road. The night signal was a hand lamp hoisted in the same way. These were superseded by a signal on which an arm was worked at the end of a rod, and a square lamp with two sides, red and white, having blinkers working on hinges to shut out the light. These were used until 1848. The semaphores only came into practical use some 20 years ago, and it is remarkable that the first time they were used on the Liverpool and Manchester line they were the cause of a slight collision. The use of signal lights on trains was much advanced by two accidents which occurred on the North Union line on the 7th September, 1841. One of these happened at Farrington, where two passenger trains came into collision. The other happened at Euxton, where a coal train ran into a stage coach which was taking passengers to Southport. The Rev. Mr. Joy was killed, and several others, including the station master, who lost one leg, were injured. These were the first serious accidents investigated by the now Government Inspector of Railways, Sir Frederic Smith, who was appointed by the Board of Trade under Lord Seymour’s Act.
—Manchester Guardian.
FOG-SIGNALS.
During the prevalence of fogs, when neither signal-posts nor lights are of any use, detonating signals are frequently employed, which are affixed to the rails, and exploded by the iron tread of the advancing locomotive. All guards, policemen, and pointsmen who are not appointed
to stations, and all enginemen, gatemen, gangers and platelayers, and tunnel-men, are provided with packets of these signals, which they are required always to have ready for use whilst on duty; and every engine, on passing over one of these signals, is to be immediately stopped, and the guards are to protect their train by sending back and placing a similar signal on the line behind them every two hundred yards, to the distance of six hundred yards; the train may then proceed slowly to the place of obstruction. When these detonating signals were first invented, it was resolved to ascertain whether they acted efficiently, and especially whether the noise they produced was sufficient to be distinctly heard by the engine driver. One of them was accordingly fixed to the rails on a particular line by the authority of the company, and in due time the train having passed over it, reached its destination. Here the engine driver and his colleague were found to be in a state of great alarm, in consequence of a supposed attack being made on them by an assassin, who, they said, lay down beside the line of rails on which they had passed, and deliberately fired at them. The efficiency of the means having thus been tested, the apprehensions of the enginemen were removed, though there was at first evident mortification manifested that they had been made the subjects of such a successful experiment.
—F. S. Williams’s Our Iron Roads.
“ALMOST DAR NOW.”
The following anecdote, illustrative of railroad facility, is very pointed. A traveller inquired of a negro the distance to a certain point. “Dat ’pends on circumstances,” replied darkey. “If you gwine afoot, it’ll take you about a day; if you gwine in de stage or homneybus, you make it half a day; but if you get in one of dese smoke wagons, you be almost dar now.”