1875.) Railway Accidents. 29 
block section until the previous engine has quitted it, to 
preserve an absolute interval of space between engines and 
trains. This may be done mechanically or electrically. 
Any means of communication with which the signalmen 
may be provided will enable them to inform one another of 
the approach of a train, of its entrance into a block section 
at one end, and of its exit from that block section at the 
other end. 
Mr. Harrison, the President of the Institution of Civil 
Engineers, has stated that the block system will, as soon as 
it is possible to complete the necessary works, be introduced 
throughout the whole of the railways in England. It was 
stated by Mr. Farrar, before the Select Committee of the 
House of Lords last year, that the railway companies had 
already spent upon introducing the block system, and the 
system of interlocking signals, between £700,000 and 
£800,000, and they were proposing to spend a great deal 
more. Besides this expense there is a considerable annual 
cost to be incurred in working those systems; the increased 
cost of the staff alone is estimated for the Great Eastern 
Railway at £13,860, and on the Midland at £130,000 per 
annum. In the case of the North Eastern Railway it is 
calculated that on the completion of the block system, the 
number of signalmen will be increased from 500 to 2000. 
Mr. Rapier, in his paper to which we have already referred, 
shows that the probable cost of the interlocking and block 
system on fourteen of the principal railways would be about 
% per cent on the whole cost of the lines, and that then 
their carrying power might be so increased that three times 
as many trains could be run on the block system as without 
it, and with greater safety. The probable cost of maintain- 
ing the block system was stated to be about 23 per cent on 
the traffic receipts, and this comparative percentage was 
less on the lines which had a great number of points to 
protect than on some of the light traffic railways. 
6. Siding Accommodation.—It was pointed out in the 
Report to the Board of Trade on Accidents that occurred 
during 1871, that collisions at stations often occurred from 
the want of accommodation at the stations or sidings, 
passenger lines being unduly obstructed from the want of 
sidings in which to place slow or stopping trains, or in 
which shunting may be performed. The same deficiency 
of accommodation may also be the indirect cause of col- 
lisions on the line between stations, when, for instance, 
from the want of siding accommodation, a slower train is 
despatched in advance of a faster one, without a sufficient 
