Anti-Telescopic Carriages.

On the Home railways there have been installed safety devices of all kinds to ensure freedom from accidents, and the records of past years pay eloquent tribute to the safe fashion in which the four great group railways conduct their operations. One of the most interesting types of safety equipment in favour is the antitelescopic coach, and on the London and North-Eastern system a portion of the passenger carriage stock is fitted with special anti-telescopic apparatus of proved worth.

This apparatus was first evolved on the former Great Central line—the enterprising undertaking which had for many years that well-known railwayman, Sir Sam Fay, as its general manager, and which was swallowed up by the L. and N.E. line under the grouping Act of 1921. It takes for form of shock-absorbing buffer springs and corrugated steel fenders placed on the end of the carriage. These make it impossible for adjoining vehicles to mount each other in the event of collision, and preserve the lateral alignment.

The idea of fixing special shock absorbers to passenger carriages is not, of course, a new one. Nearly one hundred years ago, one ingenious British inventor actually proposed to insert feather beds between the carriages as a measure of protection. Better still was the suggestion that the locomotive should be placed half a mile ahead of the train, and connected to it by a stout steel cable. “In the event of accident,” it was pointed out, “the driver only would be imperilled.” We hear much of safety these days. Even one hundred years ago, it seems, the search for railway safety was ever being pursued.