Railway timetable

“ And so it is on the railways—as long as there are punctuality and regularity all goes right. It is, therefore, the fact that the unceasing efforts of the staff of every railway company in the kingdom are unremittingly directed to ensuring punctuality to trains, as far as human nature can ensure it. It is the interest of the officials of every grade to have everything on the line working with the precision and fidelity of clockwork. ”

“ The natural inference from this is that one time-reckoning should be used throughout the whole country, and thus we are led to look forward to the adoption in the near future of a national standard time, six hours slow by Greenwich, for railways and telegraphs throughout North America.
We may then naturally expect that by the same process which we have witnessed in England, France, Italy, Sweden, and other countries, railway-time will eventually regulate all the affairs of ordinary life. ”

“ But these matters have been regulated by Divine Intelligence, and uniformity is no part of the scheme. In a very few years we shall have direct railway communication throughout Europe, from the west to the east—will it therefore be advisable to adopt a common standard of time—say that of Greenwich—for all the trains? Are the inhabitants of Paris to be aroused from slumber some three hours before their wont, because the early train from Moscow is to start at nine o'clock? ”

“ Considering that the only change which we are called on, in accordance with the Washington resolution, to make in our time-reckoning on railways is the adoption of the 24-hour system, it may be hoped that our railway companies will not be behind those of the United States in appreciating the simplification in railway time-tables which would result from this reform. ”

“ In these days, journeys must be accomplished quickly in order to keep pace with the times, and meet the growing requirements of the travelling public; but the highest attainable speed is not always the most compatible with safety and punctuality, and these latter essentials are certainly not the least important to be secured in the working of a railway. Thus the London and North-Western, if it does not lay claim to the doubtful distinction of running the fastest trains in the world, is, it is believed, fairly entitled to the reputation of being the most punctual line in the kingdom. ”

“ The time allowed for passenger trains is one hour and fifty minutes, being an average of fourteen miles an hour; for goods trains, two hours thirty minutes, or at the average rate of about ten miles an hour.
There was until just recently, a race running between the engineers at the Brenner and at the Mont Cenis, and it was, until the beginning of August, 1867, uncertain which of them would have the honour of being the second railway upon which the locomotive had crossed the Alps. ”

“ A [Pg 28] point quite as important with these means of transit as actual speed of movement is frequency: time is wasted abundantly and most vexatiously at present in waiting and in accommodating one's arrangements to infrequent times of call and departure. The more frequent a local service, the more it comes to be relied upon. Another point—and one in which the omnibus has a great advantage over the railway—is that it should be possible to get on and off at any point, or at as many points on the route as possible. ”

“ The time-table had taught us that we were to arrive at one station, and that a train was to start from another about half an hour later. A number of people were likely to change from the one to the other. To follow [Pg 293] them, as if we were of the same mind, would give us a start off and carry us beyond the eyes of the railway officials. After that I should have to do the best I could, without the help of either a compass, which I could not consult, or the stars, which were not in evidence. ”

“ In a line that is well signalled—and it may be taken for fact that there is no railway in the kingdom upon which there are not at present efficient signals—accidents are not the result of delays, although there is a very general belief in the minds of the public that it is otherwise. In two recent instances, accidents of a calamitous nature have been the result of a rail being taken up and not replaced before a train has come upon the spot ”

“ He who travels by a German railway needs patience and a full haversack. Time is of no value. The rate of speed of the trains is so slow, that one sometimes has a desire to get out and walk, and the stoppages at the stations seem eternal; but then we must remember that it is a long distance to the bottom of a great mug of beer. ”

“ The time-table shews the Greenwich time when the trains should arrive at each station, and if they be regular, they serve the purpose of a clock. If a person wishes to know the longitude of the station, he has only to ascertain the local time from a sun-dial, and the difference between this and the railway time gives the longitude. What the railway train is to the landsman, the moon is to the mariner, and while the landsman uses a dial to ascertain the local time, the sailor uses a sextant. ”

“ Every superintendent and higher official should remember that if the same train order is given every day there must be something radically wrong with the time table. All over this broad land, day after day, hundreds of unnecessary train orders are being sent because many time tables are constructed on the models of forty years ago. At that time, in fact as in name, there were two classes of trains, passenger and freight. To-day there are in reality at least two distinct classes of passenger trains and two classes of freights, or at least four in all. ”

“ Remember always, my boy, that although the good old days have completed their runs, there are better days arriving and still on the road; that from beyond the terminal at the vanishing point of the perspective the best days are coming special because no railway time-table is big enough to give them running rights. ”

“ If he starts from the Etablissement at 8·30, to meet a friend at the station, on arriving there he will discover that it is 8·15 by the Railway Clock, so that he is at the end of his journey a quarter of an hour before he set out, having done the distance in considerably less than no time,—a record worth preserving. ”

“ It is the busiest railway junction in the worid. More than two thousand five hundred trains pass through here every twenty-four hours – that is an average of two a minute all through the day and night. Actually, at the peak period, there is a train passing about every twenty seconds, and it has been worked out that about two thousand passengers ride through the station every minute during the morning and evening peak periods. ”

“ In the opinion of many experienced and prominent railway-officials in the United States, it is quite feasible and very desirable for all railways to be operated by one common time, and the first step toward this is plainly the certainty that the time-signals which are now regularly sent from the Naval Observatory shall reach each railway-station once daily, at least. ”

“ For this reason fast time on a railroad depends as much on having a good signal system to assure the locomotive-runners that the line is clear, as it does on the locomotives. If he is always liable to encounter, and must be on the look-out for, obstructions at frequent grade-crossings of common roads, or if he is not certain whether the train in front of him is out of his way or not, the locomotive-runner will be nervous and be almost sure to lose time. ”

“ The travelling public speak as calmly now of a speed of seventy miles an hour as they did of thirty-five a few years ago; they thoroughly recognize the value of railways, and they merely desire to travel still faster. The incentives of emulation and competition are ever present to encourage further and further reduction of the running time, and the railway that offers a special fast through service for some of its passenger and mail trains, reasonably expects its popularity and patronage to be in the ascendant. ”

“ All these various trains, heavy and light, fast and slow, some stopping at the stations and others dashing through them at high rates of speed, have to be accommodated to a great extent upon the same line of rails, yet all to keep their time and fulfil their appointed functions—and, briefly, this is the great problem which railway management has to solve. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If required for the benefit of the citizens of each place, a second minute hand can be added to each of these secondary clocks, so that the local time of each station can be indicated, while at the same time each railway-clock affords the means to each railway-employé of correcting his own watch. ”

“ The railway as a means of rapid transportation and general intercommunication is one of the most important factors in the development of modern commerce and civilization, and, after reviewing what it has done and become in the nineteenth century, one cannot help wishing for the opportunity to review the railway wonders of the twentieth century. ”

“ Lose time in the customary manner, and allow the train to arrive at the stated station half an hour late. Permit the passengers to descend and to enter the refreshment-rooms. The moment they are served, drive them back hurriedly into the carriages with the threat that if they are not immediately seated in their places they will be left behind. When the passengers are once more in their compartments, the carriage-doors should be securely locked, and the train can then remain waiting beside the platform for three-quarters of an hour. ”

“ There is not an article of commerce that the railway cannot move—does not move; there is not an article of commerce that the railway does not move at speed never less than eight and generally ten times as great as it was [153] by canal, until competition stimulated the pace of the latter. To what extent? From the once normal rate of two to that of three miles an hour—no more. ”

“ The inhabitants of the surrounding country at such points, having no standard of reference except the railway-clocks, accustomed themselves to and used railway-time without inconvenience, and in a number of instances, where the railway standard was changed from some cause, the people made the same change in their time-pieces. ”

“ At the present time, where the question of time is not important, the carriage of passengers and goods by water is so much cheaper than by rail as to survive in competition. Where the passenger’s time is of value, or perishable goods are carried, or the merchant is in a hurry to receive his consignment, the railway, following virtually the shortest distance between the two points—piercing mountains, spanning ravines and crossing the rivers, is, of course, the necessary means of communication. ”

“ You see him chatting with the station-master for several minutes after all the carriages have been shut up, and at last, when the topics of conversation are exhausted, he gives a condescending whistle to the engine-driver. Time seems never to be considered by either guards or passengers. Bavarians always go to the station half-an-hour before the train is due, and their indifference to delay is so well known that the directors can put on their time book ‘As the time of departure from small stations cannot be guaranteed, the travellers must be there twenty-five minutes beforehand.’” Mr. ”

“ At the end of the nineteenth century, after seventy years of development, the world has nearly 500,000 miles of railway, on which locomotives of 80 to 110 tons in weight (without their tenders) haul freight trains of 1000 to 3000 tons. Passenger trains, too, are run at speeds of 40 to 75 miles per hour in regular daily service, and even make bursts of speed at 80 to 100 miles per hour. ”

“ As they progress, the results of their labours are placed in the hands of the printers who are on the spot, and the proof-sheets are afterwards revised and corrected by the clerks who have prepared them, and this is how the time-table of the North-Western Railway is produced.
It is extremely difficult to lay down any hard and fast rules for the efficient management of the whole or a section of a large undertaking. ”

“ On most of the roads in the country passenger trains of whatever nature or importance are all shown in one class, the first. As a result every limited train in the inferior direction on single track has to be given right by train order over opposing local passenger trains in the superior direction. In other words, the working time table, by definition a general law, has no more practical value, as between such trains, than an advertising folder. A train order by its very nature is an exception to the general law, the time table. ”

“ The goods trains must shunt out of the way some time before a passenger train is due, and this frequent shunting into sidings results in hours of delay in the transit of the goods and cattle traffic; and when one of such trains is allowed to proceed again on its way up to another station, dove-tailed as it may be between two fast passenger trains, there is always the tendency to run at a much higher rate of speed than is prudent for the class of rolling-stock of which the goods train is composed. ”