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New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue VI, 6 August 1904, Page 23

This week an interesting change in the signalling system of the Auckland railways is to be inaugurated. Up to the present the “block” system has been used between Auckland and Penrose, biit the “tablet” system has been introduced between Auckland and Onehunga, anil also between Newmarket, anil I lenderson. on the Kaipira line. On Sunday the final work of transferring the wires to the new machines was performed. The machines have been placed in the stations as far as Pukekohe, and shortly the new system is to lib working as far as Frankton. It is considered impossible when the tablets are in use for a collision to occur. The essential point of the system is that no engine-driver- is allowed to leave a station without a tablet in his possession, and the element of safety rests on the fact that the machines are so made Hint it is an impossibility for two of the tablets to be out at the same time. If a train leaves Auckland for Penrose with a tablet, that tablet has to he deposited in the machine at Penrose before another tablet is issued allowing a return train to leave Penrose for Auckland, and the electrical connection between the tw4> Stations, although the two machines contain between them 24 tablets, makes it yn impossibility to extract a tablet from the Auckland machine until the tablet has been put into the niaehiue in Penrose. It follows that it is utterly impossible for two trains to be on that sectional the same time, and so the possibility of a collision is done away with.