1875.| Railway Accidents. 27 
man, there was still, as the levers in or near a cabin became 
more numerous, a liability to mistake, from the signalman 
pulling over a wrong lever; or the levers were fastened over 
by blocks of wood, “which the signalman forgot to remove ; 
and to prevent such mistakes, and serious accidents result- 
ing from them, it became further necessary to interlock the 
levers with one another. By 1860 many improvements had 
been introduced upon the interlocking system, and the in- 
specting officers of the Board of Trade began to insist on 
the use of locking apparatus at the junctions of new branches 
with existing lines. 
By the application of locking and other apparatus it is 
possible to prevent nearly all accidents from collision oc- 
curring, in the ordinary way of working, in consequence of 
any mistake of the signalman. Conflicts between signals, 
and conflicts between points and signals, may alike be 
avoided ; and a good combination of. locking-bar and 
bolt may be made to insure that the facing points are com- 
pletely over before the proper signal is lowered, and may 
also prevent them from being moved during the passage of 
atrain. It is, of course, impossible to provide against all 
the contingencies which may arise—such as, in certain 
cases, against the absolute neglect of drivers to pay atten- 
tion to the signals made to them; or such as a signalman, 
when two trains are running towards a junction at one time, 
setting his points and lowering his signals first for one of 
them, and then altering them and preparing for the second 
train, without allowing time for the first train to stop short 
of the jun¢tion. But provision may be made, and is made 
to some extent, even for the ey of an engine-driver 
neglecting to obey signals. 
In a paper recently read before the Institution of Civil 
Engineers, by Mr. R. C. Rapier, a detailed description of 
signals and points was given, besides an account of different 
methods of interlocking the two, so as to avoid accidents 
which might occur in the event of wrong signalling. It 
would be impossible to follow out that paper in detail here, 
but we may briefly state that it was there shown that the 
mere connection of switches and signals was not sufficient, 
but that effective interlocking required the movement of 
the switches to be completed before the alteration of the 
signals could be made, and vice versa; whilst, as regards 
facing-points, it was stated that, although it was desirable 
to avoid them as much as possible on a line of light traffic, 
the use of facing-points, properly controlled, might be made 
one of the greatest safeguards where trains were frequent, 
and travelled at different rates of speed. 
