features.  Of course, so long as railways are worked by men they will be liable to the imperfections belonging to all things human.  Though their machinery may be perfect and their organisation as complete as skill and forethought can make it, workmen will at times be forgetful and listless; and a moment’s carelessness may lead to the most disastrous results.  Yet, taking all circumstances into account, the wonder is, that travelling by

railway at high speed should have been rendered comparatively so safe.

To be struck by lightning is one of the rarest of all causes of death; yet more persons are killed by lightning in Great Britain than are killed on railways from causes beyond their own control.  Most persons would consider the probability of their dying by hanging to be extremely remote; yet, according to the Registrar-General’s returns, it is considerably greater than that of being killed by railway accident.

The remarkable safety with which railway traffic is on the whole conducted, is due to constant watchfulness and highly-applied skill.  The men who work the railways are for the most part the picked men of the country, and every railway station may be regarded as a practical school of industry, attention, and punctuality.

Few are aware of the complicated means and agencies that are in constant operation on railways day and night, to ensure the safety of the passengers to their journey’s end.  The road is under a system of continuous inspection.  The railway is watched by foremen, with “gangs” of men under them, in lengths varying from twelve to five miles, according to circumstances.  Their continuous duty is to see that the rails and chairs are sound, their fastenings complete, and the line clear of all obstructions.

Then, at all the junctions, sidings, and crossings, pointsmen are stationed, with definite instructions as to the duties to be performed by them.  At these places, signals are provided, worked from the station platforms, or from special signal boxes, for the purpose of protecting the stopping or passing trains.  When the first railways

were opened, the signals were of a very simple kind.  The station men gave them with their arms stretched out in different positions; then flags of different colours were used; next fixed signals, with arms or discs of rectangular or triangular shape.  These were followed by a complete system of semaphore signals, near and distant, protecting all junctions, sidings, and crossings.

When Government inspectors were first appointed by the Board of Trade to examine and report upon the working of railways, they were alarmed by the number of trains following each other at some stations, in what then seemed to be a very rapid succession.  A passage from a Report written in 1840 by Sir Frederick Smith, as to the traffic at “Taylor’s Junction,” on the York and North Midland Railway, contrasts curiously with the railway life and activity of the present day:—“Here,” wrote the alarmed Inspector, “the passenger trains from York as well as Leeds and Selby, meet four times a day.  No less than 23 passenger-trains stop at or pass this station in the 21 hours—an amount of traffic requiring not only the utmost perfect arrangements on the part of the management, but the utmost vigilance and energy in the servants of the Company employed at this place.”

Contrast this with the state of things now.  On the Metropolitan Line, 667 trains pass a given point in one direction or the other during the eighteen hours of the working day, or an average of 36 trains an hour.  At the Cannon Street Station of the South-Eastern Railway, 627 trains pass in and out daily, many of them crossing each other’s tracks under the protection of the station-signals.  Forty-five trains run in and out between 9 and

10 a.m., and an equal number between 4 and 5 p.m.  Again, at the Clapham Junction, near London, about 700 trains pass or stop daily; and though to the casual observer the succession of trains coming and going, running and stopping, coupling and shunting, appears a scene of inextricable confusion and danger, the whole is clearly intelligible to the signalmen in their boxes, who work the trains in and out with extraordinary precision and regularity.

The inside of a signal-box reminds one of a pianoforte on a large scale, the lever-handles corresponding with the keys of the instrument; and, to an uninstructed person, to work the one would be as difficult as to play a tune on the other.  The signal-box outside Cannon Street Station contains 67 lever-handles, by means of which the signalmen are enabled at the same moment to communicate with the drivers of all the engines on the line within an area of 800 yards.  They direct by signs, which are quite as intelligible as words, the drivers of the trains starting from inside the station, as well as those of the trains arriving from outside.  By pulling a lever-handle, a distant signal, perhaps out of sight, is set some hundred yards off, which the approaching driver—reading it quickly as he comes along—at once interprets, and stops or advances as the signal may direct.

The precision and accuracy of the signal-machinery employed at important stations and junctions have of late years been much improved by an ingenious contrivance, by means of which the setting of the signal prepares the road for the coming train.  When the signal is set at “Danger,” the points are at the same time worked, and

the road is “locked” against it; and when at “Safety,” the road is open,—the signal and the points exactly corresponding.

The Electric Telegraph has also been found a valuable auxiliary in ensuring the safe working of large railway traffics.  Though the locomotive may run at 60 miles an hour, electricity, when at its fastest, travels at the rate of 288,000 miles a second, and is therefore always able to herald the coming train.  The electric telegraph may, indeed, be regarded as the nervous system of the railway.  By its means the whole line is kept throbbing with intelligence.  The method of working the electric signals varies on different lines; but the usual practice is, to divide a line into so many lengths, each protected by its signal-stations,—the fundamental law of telegraph-working being, that two engines are not to be allowed to run on the same line between two signal-stations at the same time.

When a train passes one of such stations, it is immediately signalled on—usually by electric signal-bells—to the station in advance, and that interval of railway is “blocked” until the signal has been received from the station in advance that the train has passed it.  Thus an interval of space is always secured between trains following each other, which are thereby alike protected before and behind.  And thus, when a train starts on a journey, it may be of hundreds of miles, it is signalled on from station to station—it “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 South-Eastern Railway, where the system has been brought to a state of high efficiency, it is no unusual thing during Easter week to send 600,000 passengers through the London Bridge Station alone; and on some days as many as 1200 trains a-day.

While such are the expedients adopted to ensure safety, others equally ingenious are adopted to ensure speed.  In the case