AUTOMATIC POINTS CONTROL

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 253, 9 July 1926, Page 8

AUTOMATIC POINTS CONTROL

INSTALLED AT TRAMWAY JUNCTION For years Wellington people have been accustomed to witness, at the Cuba-Manners Street junction, an officer whose duty it was to shift the points whenever it was necessary to allow a car to take a track other than that taken by its predecessor. Armed with a short iron bar it was his duty to push the points over so as to make a clear track for the oncoming car. This has now been done away with, in favour of an automatic control system similar to that in use at the corner of Willis and Man tiers Streets and Willis Street and Lambton Quay. This device is operated by the application of power by the motorman when passing beneath a contact, which action communicates into an electric magnet which operates the point. At the new junction of Lower Cuba Street and Wakefield Street, which should be completed in about a week’s time, there are double points which will be controlled automatically by the motorman. At verv busy junctions in Auckland and Sydney, the control of points is managed electrically by an officer stationed in a glass-fronted control box (usually erected on the footpath) with a sixfoot overlook in all four directions, but such controls are only justified where the traffic is phenomenally heavy.