Democratic Sentinel, Volume 1, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 June 1877 — A New Automatic Railroad Signal. [ARTICLE]

A New Automatic Railroad Signal.

A certain Signor L. Guano, of Genoa, has invented an apparatus, a model of which is on view at the Ministry of Finance, which, if practically a success, would prove a great boon to travelers, for it is designed to prevent railway collisions. Without going into technicali ties, the idea is this: Between the rails is sunk a kind of box, of masonry, in which is contained a spiral spring, on which rests an upright lever with arms pointing up and down the line. The lever rises above the level of the rails, and on the sides of it work cog-wheels, to which aro attached wires, which, passing through a tube and round horizontal wheels, communicate with the next box. From the front of the engine, to work on the line, descends a perpendicular rod, communicating with the whistle, and to the tender is added a central wheel, not touching the ground, but attached to a bell in the guard’s van. On a train leaving a station, as it passes over the first of these levers the enginerod and the central wheel strike against it, the weight of the train presses it down, and in so doing raises all the arms of the levers up to the next station against any train coming in the opposite direction, at the same time ringing a bell at the next station. Supposing by chance a train on the same line to have passed that station, it would strike against the first lever, and be warned by the whistle and bell that there was danger ahead, and would put back at once, while at the same time, by reversing the levers once more, it would warn the coming train to proceed cautiously. If no other train is on the line, the first one, having set the levers in the opposite direction, passes over them without raising auy alarm. The estimated working distance of these levers from each other is two to three miles, but the inventor says that his apparatus has been at work some months successfully, at a distance of about six miles, between San Bier d’Arena and Ponte Decimo. —Pall Mall Gazette.