Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/211

 from the top to the bottom of the incline, all the necessary changes in their relative positions should be effected, so that when they reached the bottom they should be ready to go away as properly marshalled trains; and secondly, that there should be some means of stopping, without injury to them or their loads, any trucks which might get beyond the control of the shunters. The mere principle of shunting by gravitation was no new thing, as it had already been successfully adopted for coaling ship? on the Tyne, and for sorting mineral trains at Darlington on the North-Eastern Railway; but Mr. Footner claims as his own the idea of an inclined plane specially constructed in such a way as to sort and marshal a mixed goods train by gravitation alone, without any assistance from locomotive or horse power.

The arrangement he devised is shown by the accompanying diagram (Fig. 28 ). The sidings consist of, first, the six upper reception lines at the summit of the incline, holding 294 waggons; secondly, the sorting sidings, 24 in number, and capable of holding 1,065 waggons, into which the waggons, when separated, first run, each siding receiving the waggons for a particular train; thirdly, two groups of marshalling sidings, which owing to their peculiar formation have been christened "gridirons," through which the trucks are filtered so as to make them take their proper order of precedence in the train; and, fourthly, the lower reception and departure lines, which receive the trains in their complete state, and where the engines are attached to take them away. All these, it may be remarked, are laid out in such a manner, with a view to future requirements, that without altering any of the existing lines