Some Watchers of the Night

The Railway Signalman

by Will Lawson

The man whose mind and hand are holding the key to this amazing puzzle of men, engines, trucks, and switches is in the signal box, which stands over beyond the north main track. High above the scene, he watches and listens, and moves his levers accordingly. A long, shining row of levers he has. On the wall of his cabin is a plan of the yard, with all its sidings and switches, and for every siding there is a pre-arranged signal blown by the engineman who wants to go to it. The plan is there; but the signalman never looks at it. In his mind's eye he sees before him the whole yard, every switch a vital impression, and when the smallest engine in the yard -blows a cheeky cock-crow, in a flash he sees the siding she wants — no more need to look at the numbered plan, than the telegraph operator has to think what letter in the Morse alphabet his sounder is spelling out. It is an instance of the development of a hitherto unawakened sense.

The whole system of signals and switches is interlocked, and it may , be that the cheeky engine will not get at once the siding she demands. Another engine may have entered it from the other end, and the opening of the one switch immediately locks the second switch of any siding.

But the signalman has more to attend to than the shunters and their work. His box controls also the main lines, and the running of the trains is more important than the shunting work. At the south entrance to the yard a second box stands in which is another signalman. It is controlled by the north box, with which it is in telephonic communication. So the man in the north box has need of all the alertness he possesses.

At half-past 10 the last suburban train thrashed out, her steamy smoke curling and writhing in the red light. Passing the signal box, the engine-driver was handed the tablet which gives him the right of way to the next tablet station. The tail lights faded away down the long, straight line, the red three stars shrinking and merging until they were but one smudge of colour on the night's blackness. Shunting is the principal work for upwards of an hour after the train's departure. But at half-past 11 the signalman hears the bell on his tablet instrument call stridently. There is a goods train at the next station asking to be given a clear line to the town yards. He presses a handle of the, machine giving the needful permission, and returns to his task. An engine, with a whistle that breaks like the voice of a growing youth, shrieks out two short and two lone notes (the last an ear-splitting sound). The levers clash and rattle, and a signal light, set low on the ground at the points, bids her come on. So she goes grunting away with her string of freezing cars. Now there is a rolling up from the goods shed — an enormous train of wool waggons. From behind them somewhere a big, hoarse whistle booms. Again the levers lean to the strain, and the wool goes rumbling past, a queer-looking double-ended Fairlie engine spitting her cinders high as she pushes at her load.

Now the man in the box looks at his clock. The "goods" is about due. He looks out, and far to the north a new star has risen — or so it seems at first. The signalman, however, is no astronomer. He knows it for a locomotive's headlight. Soon a shrill whistle blows where a level crossing spreads its white dust in the rays of her light. The levers tremble and clash, and when the approaching train blows her call to the signalman he has prepared for her. Into the yard she rolls, takes a switch with a jerk of her pilot, and sweeps away into the darkness beyond the sheds. The engine presently runs away to the engine-shed, to be seized upon by the cleaners. And the little puffers in the yard pounce on the long train and begin to pull it to pieces. Cattle, goods, and grain, wool, machinery, and hemp — they are trundled here and hauled there till no one could find that train if he tried. It is nearly midnight when the bells call again from the northward. The overland night express demands the right of way — and gets it. Her headlight, very large and brilliant, leaps at last round the curve that is mile away. She is coming at a speed of 4 miles an hour, waking the countryside with a gleam of lights and a thunder o sound. Yet those whose slumbers are disturbed turn over comfortably with the reflection, "the night mail," and there is a feeling of pride in the thought. She is just a minute behind her time, and in the straight stretch her big wheels are picking that minute up. The 70-ton engine is doing her best, and steady as a rock she runs, with none of the swinging and rolling of the high-pitched American racers.

The signalman has given her the signal to come on. Round the yard a thrill

has passed. The overland! She is coming now, the finest train in New Zealand. The metals are already murmuring in sympathy with the crashing chorus the wheels are singing out on the open road.

'Time! Time! We're running in time !" A whistle's shriek at the home signal, where a street crosses ; then a brass-bound hulk looms behind the vivid headlight. A roar, and she is under the signal box and shaking, it to its foundations. The carriages stream after their tired and trusty leader. The signalman glances at his clock. She is here to the tick. That lost minute was found again. The tail lights, always angry-eyed at being left behind, glare in the polished rails as the train pulls up at the station, where porters and passengers, looking after luggage and seats, awaken the sleepers in the cars. And the hush that fell over the shunting yard lifts again. Fifteen minutes later the south box reports, "Overland signalled out 12.15. " That is the last train for some hours now. The signalman turns mechanically and opens a switch for the two-headed Fairlie dragon, while to the smallest and cheekiest engine in the yard he says " No !" most emphatically.

Otago Witness, Issue 2884, 30 June 1909, Page 88