Railway platform

“ The government owns and operates the railway, and, although the running time is very slow, not more than fifteen or eighteen miles an hour, the management is admirable, and there are some excellent features which might be imitated with profit by the railway companies in the United States. For example, at every railway station on the platform, is a big wooden tank of cool water with plenty of dippers. Beside it is a similar tank of hot water, so that the passengers, who expect it, bring their teapots along with them. ”

“ There is, however, one conceivable means of transit that is not simply frequent but continuous, that may be joined or left at any point without a stoppage, that could be adapted to many existing streets at the level or quite easily sunken in tunnels, or elevated above the street level, [11] and that means of transit is the moving platform, whose possibilities have been exhibited to all the world in a sort of mean caricature at the Paris Exhibition. Let us imagine the inner circle of the district railway adapted to this conception. ”

“ In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own railway platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when possibly a tramway thence to the dumping-room will be a recognised and necessary 'improvement.' When that day comes, shearers and washers will arrive by train from the coast-range, or the 'Never Never' country ”

“ Block-Telegraph Signalling.—However complete the outdoor signals and interlocking at any station, they can only control the movement of trains within their range, and something more is requisite to ensure the safe working of the traffic over the long lengths of line between stations. For some years a time-interval was allowed for the working of trains following one another on the UP and DOWN lines of a double line railway, no train being allowed to leave a station sooner than a fixed number of minutes after a previous train had started in the same direction. ”

“ It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. ”

“ Where there are only two lines of rails to serve for the UP and DOWN service of a heavy passenger and goods traffic, it is imperative to restrict those lines as much as possible to the actual transit of trains, and not to block them by unnecessary occupation for shunting purposes. A goods train running a long distance collects waggons from many roadside stations, and at some of them several waggons will be taken on, to be forwarded to various and widely distant destinations. ”

“ The system of cast-iron railways is as yet to be considered but in its infancy. It will be found to be an immense improvement on the common road, and also on the wooden railway. It neither presents the friction of the tram-way, nor partakes of the perishable nature of the wooden railway, and, as regards utility, it may be considered as the medium between the navigable canal and the common road. We may therefore hope that as this system develops itself, our roads will be laid out as much as possible on one level, and in connection with the great lines of communication throughout the country. ”

“ Almost every great passenger terminal in America is built upon the head-house plan. In this scheme trains arrive and depart upon a series of parallel tracks terminating within some sort of train-shed. It is the ideal scheme from the standpoint of the passenger, for no stairs or bridges or subways are necessary to reach any track. The tracks are generally laid in pairs, and between each pair a broad platform is built, which is in reality a long-armed extension of a common distributing platform or concourse extending across the head of the tracks. ”

“ It is true that the railway systems may be united through switches and connecting tracks in physical connection, but this has not been held to justify great monumental structures, extended in their complicated machinery and superficial extent and expense. There is a difference of real substance between such conecting tracks and switches and junctions and a passenger metropolitan union station. ”

“ And thus, when a train starts on a journey of it may be hundreds of miles, it is signaled on from station to station, and "lives along the line," until at length it reaches its destination, and the last signal of "train in" is given. By this means an immense number of trains can be worked with regularity and safety. On the Southeastern Railway, where the system has been brought to a state of high efficiency, it is no unusual thing during Easter week to send 570,000 passengers through the London Bridge Station alone; and on some days as many as 1200 trains a day. ”

“ The to-and-fro movement of a dense traffic on a four-track railway requires a large amount of switching, especially when each movement is complicated by junctions of two or more lines. Practically every problem of trunk line train movement, including two, three, and four-track operation, had to be provided for in the switching plants of the subway. Further, the problem was complicated by the restricted clearances and vision attendant upon tunnel construction. ”

“ Narrow platforms should always be avoided, especially in front of the offices and waiting-rooms. Nothing tends more to check the proper expeditious working of the traffic than a confined space for the movement of the passengers and of the station staff carrying luggage. ”

“ These scattered bits of road here and there were, in after years, as the possibilities of railroad development began to dawn upon the minds of far-seeing men, united by connecting links and reorganized into roads of much greater length. In fact some of the most difficult features of the railroad problem of the present day grew out of the failure of projectors of railroads{435} in the early days to grasp the meaning of the system which they were instituting. France, Germany, Belgium and other European cities have had no serious railway problem. ”

“ Where the traffic is moderate, it may be sufficient to have block-telegraph instruments at each of the stations, but with a very frequent train service it will be found necessary to divide the line into shorter sections, and erect signal-cabins and block-telegraph instruments at intermediate points between stations. ”

“ The balance is built and operated on private right of way, and goes around, rather than through, the cities. The tracks are standard gauge and of standard railroad construction, were, at the time they were laid, of higher class than those of the Southern Railway Company in the same territory, were intended for handling substantial interchange freight traffic in connection with steam railroads, have the same ruling grades as the latter in the same territory, and are of 80-pound rail. ”

“ Wooden sleepers continued to be used, the rails being secured by spikes passing through the extremities, but about 1793 stone blocks also began to be employed—an innovation associated with the name of Benjamin Outram, who, however, apparently was not actually the first to make it. This type of rail (fig. 1) was known as the plate-rail, tramway-plate or barrow way-plate—names which are preserved in the modern term “plate layer” applied to the men who lay and maintain the permanent way of a railway. ”

“ Exits and entrances to the trains must be built in order that incoming and outgoing streams of persons shall not conflict. All these points require careful study. It is possible to design a baggage-room so bad as to make the station all but a failure; a stuffy ticket-office that is almost an impossibility to use under pressure conditions. The good engineer thinks two or three thousand times before he begins the design of a passenger terminal.
The concourse, or head platform, that joins all the different track platforms is the main feature of the terminal building. ”

“ In some cases of island platforms the total width of the station buildings and platforms is made much greater than indicated in the above sketches, and a wide, easy incline constructed from an over-line public-road bridge, to allow cabs and carriages to come down to a large paved area between the platforms, for the convenience of setting down and taking up the train passengers and their luggage. ”

“ The ordinary electric telegraph could have been utilized to assist in regulating these train movements, but it was felt that a mere telegraph message was not sufficient to ensure positive safety, and that something more tangible was required in the shape of a staff, or token, without which no train should be allowed to travel on a single line of railway. ”

“ The railroads, then, have proved themselves competent and trustworthy. But if they are to furnish the necessary additions and provide new terminals, without which the traffic of the country can no more continue to move than a derelict can voyage from port to port, the money will not come, as a magician catches coins, out of the air. ”

“ In a national and in a social point of view, also, railways have produced important improvements. They tend to equalize the value of land throughout the kingdom, by bringing distant sources of supply nearer the points of consumption; they have given extraordinary stimulus to manufacturing industry; and by connecting all parts of the country more closely together, railway communication has concentrated the energies of the people, and has thus added materially to their wealth, their comforts, and to social intercourse. ”

“ On a working railway, the train service must be kept going, irrespective of renewals, and very often the best that can be done is to reduce the double line to single line working at the site of the operations. It is not always expedient or possible to make a temporary bridge and diverted line for traffic purposes, as the expenditure to be incurred might be too great to warrant the outlay, or there may be local difficulties to effectually prevent the introduction of a provisional structure. ”

“ It is very doubtful how far the addition of a single rail only would be consistent with safety, as in this case the centre of gravity of the carriages of different gauge in the same train would not be in the same straight line. If a complete double set of rails were laid down the expense would be very considerable. ”

“ Even the export trade alone in coals and iron could not be conducted with convenience upon the same line of rails as the passenger traffic, and would require a separate line of rails in order to allow the waggons passing and repassing from the different works within the district to reach without interruption some principal station at its extremity, where trains of the proper size could be formed and dispatched to distant points. ”

“ The question for us to consider was whether it would be wiser to continue our walk along the high road, on the chance of its bringing us to a station, or whether we should clamber up the embankment to the railway line itself, and follow that along in the hope of achieving the same result. On the one side there was the likelihood of our having to go a long way round, and on the other the suspicion that might possibly be aroused in the minds of the railway officials should we make an appearance at the station in such an unorthodox fashion. Eventually, however, we decided for the railway line. ”

“ They are all mounted on carriage springs, and have grease boxes, spring buffers, and every other device in use on the London and North-Western Railway—from which they have been copied, like everything else on this Liliputian line. The greatest railway in the world took a friendly interest in the smallest, and supplied it with the drawings and models from which it and its rolling stock have been imitated. ”

“ The first result of the swarming of thousands to the West was a demand for new railways, to open up plain and prairie and mineral range, and to make connection with East and West. The building of the railways in its turn gave a stimulus to every industry. As in the early fifties and early eighties, this period of rapid railway expansion—much longer, however, than previous periods—was {183} an era of optimistic planning and feverish speculation. ”

“ Along such lines there always had been large traffic, and it was no doubt greatly stimulated by the facilities which the new mode of locomotion afforded for its expansion. But as fresh railways were completed, and as the capital invested in them increased, the profits receded. Even at the present time, with larger receipts per mile than have ever been taken, the position of railway investment is almost from every point of view, unsatisfactory. ”

“ In some cases much assistance has been obtained by shortening the lengths of the working sections and introducing intermediate electric telegraph block stations between the ordinary stations. Long refuge-sidings have also been introduced at many of the signal-cabins or stations, into which goods trains can be shunted out of the way to allow fast passenger trains to pass through without stopping. ”

“ To see waggons with flat wheels drawn over cast-iron rails one yard long by a horse, cannot fail to interest those who watch the workings of railways, and it most clearly shows the great improvements made and the perseverance which has been required to develop the present gigantic railway system out of such small beginnings. ”