Silent Sentinels.

Signals, those two lights; spread in profusion along the railway lines of New Zealand, detailed to guard the approaches to each and every station in the country, efficient, silent, conscientious, unsleeping sentries whose challenge may not be denied, whose “pass, friend” is never given without real assurance. Simple in themselves, they are but the marionettes that respond to the strings of a guiding power; they are the outward symbols of that cool, watchful police department of the railways.

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Those signals never work haphazardly, they are never confused, uncertain or at fault. The lives and property that depend upon their proper functioning are too valuable to be left to chance. That is why the signal system of the New Zealand railways is—“Perfect.”

The signalman said it for me, as I sat in his elevated cabin at Thorndon Station and watched him at work.

“But there is a philosopher who says that nothing in life is perfect,” I observed.

“A philosopher? Well, I'll bet he wasn't a railway signalman, or he wouldn't have said it.”