LEVEL CROSSINGS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 308, 27 November 1936, Page 2

LEVEL CROSSINGS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—lt appears that some time something may be done to make the railway, which has gathered a garden city round it, get out of the way, so that we can plant a few more flowers, shrubs, statues, and obsolete weapons, the latter to remind us that we are still a long way from having obtained a civilisation worthy of tho name. The railways are our own; that is, if we are a true democracy, because they belong to the State and the State is administered by those who from time to time are given the high honour of doing that administration for the greatest good of the greatest number of its employers. There is another method of running railways called private enterprise. Now in England, where the railways are run by and for the profit of private enterprise, company shareholders, and directors, the life of the individual who wishes to cross a railway line is sacred. He or she is protected with the utmost care. In New Zealand, if one of the sovereign people, after beduly warned to stop and look out for the engine, persists in carrying on when a train is approaching, it is his or her own silly fault, and for all I know to the contrary if they survive may be liable to a fine for scratching some of the paint off an engine. At present it looks as though private enterprise was more than one up. There is, however, a but, and that is that in the dim and distant past, if any person was killed or damaged by a railway train, either in an accident as a passenger or trying to walk or drive a horse in front of an oncoming train, the owners of the train could be proceeded against in the Law Courts, and they or their heirs would receive such heavy damages that it paid the private companies to make their levelcrossings foolproof. Therefore, now in England the trains run under or over the road and traffic or lives aro protected where there are level crossings by such massive gates that no motorist with tho best intentions in the world could do much damage to, and leave himself any car worth looking for.

Allow me to tell your readers and the New Zealand Administration what is the method used in Burton-on-Treut. For many years before there were any cars I had occasion to drive a horse and sulky from Derby to Burton, 10 miles each way, once a month ior several years. The railway that serves Burton is on the town level, and one approaches the town by going over a wide bridge which spans the station and descends into Station Street. In Station Street are three world-famous breweries. Each has to convey on its own siding, across Station Street, vast quantities of beer to the main line, to be despatched to Great Britain and Ireland and the Empire generally. At each of these sidiiigs there is a signal box and a man with red or green flags for day, and red or green lights at night. With these he warns all and sundry proceeding along Station Street that a train will shortly cross the street. I think he also strikes a gong or blows a whistle —I forget—but having warned them he pulls % lever and two gates on small wheels hold all street traffic up till he opens them again, the line being cleai. I have never heard of anyone being injured by trains on these sidings in Burton. No doubt a deviation would be the best method in Palmerston North, but in the case of a death-trap like, say, the Annisbrook crossing outside Nelson, the Burton method would have saved many lives. In fairness to New Zealand it is to be noted that most of the English roads were made hundreds of years before the trains came, but all the same, if New Zealanders when visiting England would notice how English trains get in and out of London, Manchester, Liverpool, Crewe, if they are engineers they will see that we have something to learn about traffic control without putting stations out of the town limits.—l am, etc., C. S. PIKE.