Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/167

 plan is being gradually superseded by the introduction of a system of lighting by compressed oil gas, about 26,000 oil lamps being, however, still in use. At all stations where the lamping of trains is performed, separate rooms are provided, as remote as possible from the station buildings, to lessen the risk of fire. These rooms are furnished with tables having iron frames and slate tops, with benches for cleaning and filling the lamps, wooden stands for cleaning the lamp cases, and racks affixed to the walls, in which the lamps are placed when cleaned, trimmed, and ready for use. The rooms are also fitted with iron tanks for the oil, waste bins, and sawdust bins. On the arrival of a train the lamps are removed from the carriages, placed on a truck specially constructed for the purpose, and taken to the lamp-room, where the cases are cleaned, the burners filled, and the wicks trimmed, when the lamps are replaced in the train, or placed in the racks, as the case may be.

The system of lighting by oil gas, previously referred to, is the patent of Mr. Pope, the gas being manufactured from shale oil. At the stations where this gas is made and supplied, the oil is brought to the works in barrels, and emptied into a large covered iron tank, let into the ground outside the gas-house, being afterwards pumped thence into a smaller tank, placed at a high level inside the gas-house. From this it is allowed to gravitate to red-hot retorts, through a small jet pipe, and is vapourised, afterwards passing through a hydraulic main to the condensers, thence to a coke scrubber, and, finally, through a registering meter to the gas-holder. The gas is stored in reservoirs about 18 feet long, and about 4 feet in diameter, built up of