Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1896 — Railroad Fog Signals. [ARTICLE]

Railroad Fog Signals.

A London paper contains an account of the eleaborate precautions taken by an English railway company to prevent accidents on nine miles of its main line in thabcity, when one of the heavy fogs peculiar to the metropolis settles over it. On this nine miles of road there are nine stations, including the main terminus. At the largest of these there are forty-eight signal posts, the second in size has twenty-nine, the third has thirty-four and all nine have 157. Whenever a fog settles down a man is stationed at every one of these posts, and the engineers get their running instructions from these men, no dependence being placed in the usual signals. To man this section of track for six hours, from morning until noon, costs the company $65. When a fog man furnishes his own refreshments, he is allowed eighteen cents a shift, so that the expense to the company for food for a single shift would be nearly $24. If reliance were placed in torpedoes about 5,000 would be required in six hours, and their cost would be equal to or even more than the expense of the fog men, while the English engineers prefer to have the latter. Very few collisions have occurred under this system of operation,in spite of the pitchy darkness of a London fog.—Washington Star.