Page:The Working and Management of an English Railway.djvu/169

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ROLLING STOCK—CARRIAGES.
139

to Aberdeen and back. Gas cannot be consumed under this high pressure, but has to be passed through a regulator, so as to reduce it to something like the pressure of coal gas as used for household purposes, and this is effected by a very simple contrivance. The gas passes from the high pressure cylinder through a small needle hole, with a pin valve and lever attached to a diaphragm, in a round box. As soon as 95 water gas gauge pressure has entered this box, the diaphragm rises and closes the valve, which does not re-open until the lights are turned on, when it admits gas at the same rate at which it is consumed at the burners. Each jet can be regulated to a given size, so that it cannot blaze and cause waste, and all the lights in a carriage can be turned off or half-off, by a key at the end of the carriage. Finally, each carriage has a pressure gauge to indicate the pressure of gas in the cylinders, and to shew when the supply is exhausted.

It must not be supposed that the London and North Western Company, in their endeavours to secure an improved system of lighting their passenger carriages, have overlooked the question of electric lighting, or that they have been oblivious of the experiments which have been made in this direction upon various railways, but chiefly upon the Southern lines. They are, on the contrary, perfectly alive to the fact that in all probability the electric light is the light of the future for railway carriages, as for most other purposes; and they have not been behindhand in making experiments with it on their own account. For some time past one of their trains running between Liverpool and Manchester has been lighted by electricity, and not without success; and although the directors, regarding the question as