Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/204

 Stations, as the train proceeds on its journey. The extent of the operations required may be gathered from the fact that the London and North Western Company alone have no less than 228 engines constantly employed in this work of marshalling and classifying the trains in the sidings, and that the total number of hours of shunting performed last year by these engines was estimated at 1,989,751, representing a cost to the Company, at 5s. per hour (including wages), of £497,437.

The great importance of performing this work in an effectual manner, and with the minimum expenditure of time and money, has led to the subject being studied and debated perhaps to a greater extent than any of the other problems which railway management has had to deal with. Many plans have been suggested and put in operation, as, for instance, at Camden, where the sidings are laid in parallel lines, with a double line of turn-tables across them, worked by hydraulic capstans; at Willesden, Stafford, and other places, where there are sets of sidings in the shape of a fan, with a shunting "neck," or siding, which represents the handle of the fan; and at other stations where the fan-shaped sidings are adopted, but with a falling gradient, utilised so as to economise power. The "fan" arrangement, either with or without the aid of gravitation, is the one most commonly in use, and its utility is sufficiently apparent if the nature of the operation required to be performed is borne in mind. By its aid a miscellaneous collection of waggons for different destinations can be broken up into sections, each section being placed either by gravitation, by a shunting engine, or by horses, in a separate siding. All the sidings running into a common departure line, it is obvious that the sets of waggons can then be drawn