656 
Light Railways. 
Let us deal with railway construction to start with. First and 
loremost, railways of this class of course know nothing of the 
obligation to construct over or under bridges where they cross a 
road. They merely cross on the level, and at the crossing 
point, instead of our elaborate gatekeepers’ houses and gates 
closing alternately across the road and across the line, and 
interlocked with signals from a, neighbouring box, there is at 
most a simple barrier — a long pole balanced so as to fall across 
the road when a watchman, half a mile off it may be, pulls a 
string because he sees on the clock that a train is nearly due. 
This amount of protection may be provided on really important 
roads, but on the ordinary country lanes nothing of the kind is 
found necessary, and the train simply crosses without barriers 
of any sort. So, too, there may be fences along the line where 
they are obviously required ; as, for instance, in passing through 
enclosed fields in a grazing country. But fences are never erected 
as a matter of coui’se, so that whenever the line passes through 
woods or moorland or unenclosed down, or, again, through 
market gardens, or allotments where cattle could never possibly 
be grazing at large, or, yet more important, whenever it passes 
along on the side of the high road, fences are habitually dis- 
pensed with. It goes without saying that the permanent way 
is also very different from main-line standard. The bridges are 
probably of timber instead of steel girders ; 85-lb. rails in 45-lb. 
chairs, packed with two feet of carefully broken ballast, are re- 
placed by 45-lb. flat-footed rails spiked down straight on to the 
sleepers, which in their turn rest, almost if not quite directly, on 
the ordinary surface of the ground. 
Then, too, the system of working is as rudimentary as the 
method of construction. Signals, except possibly at a junction 
with the main line, are unheard of. Interlocking of course 
vanishes, because there are no signals with which to interlock 
the points, and the facing-point locks and detector bars and so 
forth disappear along with them. Block working in the strict 
sense disappears also. In place of it the trains are timed to 
pass each other — for that these lines are single goes without 
saying — at certain fixed points, and if it is necessary to alter the 
working for any reason the arrangement is made by telephone 
between the staff concerned. For all that, the speed is main- 
tained quite at a reasonable level. Fifteen to 20 miles an hour 
may be said to be the limit in the case of railways that run along 
the public road, while in the case of lines built on separate land of 
their own 25 miles an hour is something like the average. In 
the few cases in this country and in Ireland where lines ana- 
logous to Continental light railways exist, our Board of Trade has, 
