140 Sir Frederick Bramwell [May 19, 



No doubt most of you are aware of tlie way in wbicli points, and 

 switch-locks, and gates at level crossings, are interlocked with the 

 signal apparatus. You know that arrangements are made by which it 

 is impossible, for example, that a signal can be given to invite a train 

 to approach until the gate of a level crossing, which should be closed 

 against the common road, is closed ; and conversely, when that gate 

 is closed to the common road and is open to the railway, the same 

 arrangements prevent the moving of the gate during the time there 

 is exhibited a signal inviting the train to approach — in the first case 

 the signal must remain at danger, in the second case the gate must 

 remain closed to the common road. I presume most of you are aware, 

 as I have said, that such an arrangement as this exists. I propose to 

 apply it for the stopping of my smugglers, and to do so by the follow- 

 ing means. 



Let me ask you to imagine that there is to be at the outlet of the 

 tunnel, on the surfiice, a building of great strength, to prevent the 

 possibility of hardy smugglers escaping from it, and with station accom- 

 modation of such length as to contain the longest train ever known. 

 In this building the custom house should be situated. At the outer 

 end there would be a strong iron grating, so that while that was closed 

 no smuggler could jump out of the train and run out into the open 

 country, and at the hinder end of it, towards the tunnel, there would 

 be a similar strong iron grating, which would prevent any smuggler 

 jumping out of the train and endeavouring to run back through the 

 tunnel to France. These strong iron gratings would be connected by 

 the interlocking machinery, which would be concealed deep down in 

 the rock, and would be of such a character that although both gratings 

 might be shut at one time, by no possibility could one grating be 

 opened until the other one was fully closed, and this machinery would 

 be worked, not from within the station at all, but from a place exterior 

 to it, the person working it having a view through the grating of what 

 was going on. The result of such an arrangement would be this, that 

 on a train arriving from the Continent and pulling up at the custom 

 house, having in it smugglers, and I will take an extreme case, and say 

 even full of smugglers, that train would find a closed grating in front 

 of it. The custom-house officers make their examination ; while they 

 are doing so, persons outside the station by the apparatus close the 

 grating in the rear of the train ; the train is now between two 

 gratings, and we will assume that the officials inside the station find 

 out that the train is full of smugglers, and that thereupon a differ- 

 ence of opinion arises between the smugglers and the custom-house 

 officers, and it may be that the passengers being desperate characters 

 intent on smuggling, overpower the custom-house officers. But even 

 when they had done that it appears to me they would be, as 

 Shakspeare says, " in a very parlous case," for the persons outside 

 who have the command of the apparatus which works the gates, 

 seeing what is going on, do not use it, but they go to the nearest 

 police station and bring down the police, or, in the assumed case of 



