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The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 6, Issue 2 (June 1, 1931)

The Conjurer's Box

The Conjurer's Box.

The signalman showed me a tablet machine against the wall. He pressed on one brass button, which he said rang a bell in the railway office at Ngaio, away up in the hills. In code he asked permission to issue a tablet from his own machine for an outward-bound train. Had there been a train between Ngaio and Thorndon he would have had to wait. But there was none, so the Ngaio man, page 40 unseen, pressed his switch and pushed in a slot on his machine, allowing the Thorndon signalman to open a slot in turn in his own machine and extract the required tablet.

He tied it to its carrier, set the inter-locked starting signal and handed the tablet to the driver of the train as it passed by the cabin. Not until that tablet arrived at Ngaio could another tablet be extracted from the electric machine at either station, and so no other train could travel until the one was clear.

And if that system failed ? There were two provisions—authorisation by a set of five telegrams instead of a tablet, or the appointment of a railway man to act as a pilot. (“Any more questions?”)

The maintenance man showed me on a chart the manner in which certain points on the tracks locked others, thus reducing danger to vanishing point. The chart gave one a brain storm to look at, leave alone work out.

I gave it up. I had done my best to find a loophole, but had failed. There seemed to be no possibility of accident unless an engine-driver mistook the green and red lights, or the arms, of the signals. That left a small enough chance of error.

426 Miles in 14 1/2 Hours. (Rly. Publicity photo.) The Limited Express from Auckland approaching Thorndon Station, Wellington.

426 Miles in 14 1/2 Hours.
(Rly. Publicity photo.)
The Limited Express from Auckland approaching Thorndon Station, Wellington.

I left the signalman in his cabin working the levers incessantly, protected against error, provided with an alternative to everything, setting tracks for 180 odd trains a day, eating his lunch with one hand, still fascinated by his job after years at the game.

That philosopher who said nothing was perfect—well, I would just like him to visit that signal box for half-an-hour.