GREAT RAILWAY SYSTEM

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 110, 5 April 1930, Page 13

GREAT RAILWAY SYSTEM

1400 TRAINS A DAY. RAPID GROWTH OF SYDNEY. Even. Its greatest enemy will admit that Sydney has a. marvellous train service. With the growth of the suburbs this has developed to tremendous proportions, and the safe manner in which it is handled is to ;the credit of the department and its employees. Ten years ago 700 trains arrived and departed from the central railway station each week day. Since then the daily total has grown to the amazing figure of 1400. When it was . erected in iyoß the central station was regarded as hopelessly extravagant, but the ten platforms that were provided ■ then have grown to 23, and even now, with the growth, of the electric services, the engineers are? thinking - about the provision of auxiliary stations to cope with the increase of traffic in the next decade. ‘ Well over 120,000,000 passengers used the central station last year. In business hours alone every working day 144,000 passed through the -barriers. Some times the trains arrive and depart at the rate of six a minute, and in all the press of traffic to the suburbs, country trains must be prepared and drawn up to the platforms so. that they may be ready to leave at their appointed times. •_ Locomotives and trains weave their way across intricate points and cross-; ings apparently in a hopeless muddle, yet during last year not a single person was injured in the yards at the central station. Standing sentinellike over the maize of lines there arethree signal boxes that, between them, control 219 sets of points operated compressed air, and 50 power-inter-locked signals. Once, during the difficult times when the lines were overburdened with steam trains, and again during the process of electrification, it was often a toss up whether a train would be on time or ten minutes or more late. Now there are days when every one of the trains runs to time —not a minute late. Running such a vast number of trains to time calls for a high degree of efficiency in both staff and equipment. Every train that passes ovei» the immensely busy section during the first half-mile out from the central station operates 600 electrical signal devices, all arranged for safe running. The system is complicated in the extreme, but it is fool proof.