🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan27.104508.24667@infodev.cam.ac.uk> rf@cl.cam.ac.uk (Robin Fairbairns) writes:
> tendency only intermittently to operate track circuits that detect the
> presence of trains on a portion of track.  Now, since railways are
> hung about with _so_ much safety legislation, the lack of this
> information (which in days of yore used to be supplied by the people
> sitting in signal boxes at every significant junction) means serious

Track circuits never replaced human viewing of tail-lights; it added to
it.  The worrying number of accidents caused by problems with trains
stopped at home signals being ``forgotten'' by signalmen who then
accepted movements past the distant made track circuiting one of the big
issues at the beginning of this century, along with continuous brakes
and AWS (which was in use by the GWR well before the second war).

Rolt's ``Red For Danger'' provides a rather superficial look at this
issue, while Nock's ``Railway Accidents'' is a little less colourful but
more accurate. 

ian