Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/188

 despatch a goods train, taking care to inform the driver of the passenger train when it does arrive, what time the goods train was started, and where it was ordered to shunt. The same principle applies to a slow or stopping passenger train travelling in front of an express which is known to be late.

These are general rules, but on all the more important sections of the main lines it has been found desirable to fix an absolute margin of time within which a goods train is to leave a particular station in advance of a passenger train. This information is set forth, for each division of the line, in what is called the "Working Book," a compendium of general instructions and information issued every month for the guidance of the staff, and which gives also the locality of the various shunting or refuge sidings, and the number of waggons each of them will contain.

The following table, as an example, gives these particulars for down trains on the line from London to Rugby; but, of course, similar arrangements exist with regard to up trains and for all the other divisions of the main line.

But this is not all. To ensure the principal station-masters and inspectors being kept well posted as to the working of the line and the movement of the trains, a most elaborate system is in force for telegraphing the progress of the trains from point to point. For instance, the telegraph clerk at Stafford will telegraph the time of departure of all trains from Stafford, to Crewe, to Chester, to Wolverhampton, to Tamworth, to Warrington, and to any other stations at which the information is useful, and this is continually going on all over the line, and from almost every station and signal cabin, so