London Letter AUTOMATION AIDS BRITISH RAILWAYS

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28270, 7 May 1957, Page 13

London Letter AUTOMATION AIDS BRITISH RAILWAYS

[From PETER FABIAN, London Correspondent of “The Press")

LONDON, April 26.—Automation and television are to play an important part in a drive for more efficiency in the running of the railways in Britain. Wherever modernisation schemes are being planned, electronic devices have their place. They not only save manpower but speed up the handling of traffic with the minimum addition to existing installations.

A replanning project at the marshalling yards at Thornton, in Fife, Scotland, which is to cost £1,400,000, is expected to become the “show-piece” of British Railways. It will include a “hump” marshalling system which will be equipped with two television screens to give the yardmaster additional “eyes. ’ With the hump system, waggons are disconnected from a rake of trucks and gain enough momentum when running down a 1 decline to reach a marshalling point on a selected line where a train for one particular destination is being made up. At Thornton special attention is being paid to the siting of the yardmaster’s office to give him a full view’ of one end of the yard, while two 14-inch television monitor screens will provide him with a complete view of the other end of the yard. The two television cameras will be mounted on a 46-foot tower, giving a complete sweep of the yard beyond his line of direct vision.

The yard will cover more than 60 acres and handle more than 3000 waggons a day As a great deal of this traffic, mostly in coal, will be arriving for marshalling during the night, banks of mercury vapour lamps on 55-foot towers will enable the work to be carried out in light almost as good as daylight.

Although the “hump” principle of shunting is not new. the Thornton yard’s system will be equipped with the latest form of automatic speed retarders for the waggons with speed control and pre-selecting of the “roads” controlled by radar “sensing” apparatus. With conventional “hump" systems the braking and siting of the various “roads” is a manual operation for the shunter. Under the new scheme the man in the outlook tower receives all his information on the speed of the waggons electronically and ensures then that the retarders reduce the speed so that the proper destination is reached for making up trains. Tax-free Schooling

A method of paying children’s 1 school fees, and claiming tax re- 1 funds on them, has been found j by some middle-class London ■ families who can barely afford to send their children to preparatory schools. This is one • of the few winning moves open to the British taxpayers. The method is for a grandparent, uncle, or godparent to make an educational covenant promising to pay a fixed sum each year to a trustee on behalf of a child. The Inland Revenue refunds income tax paid on these amounts. The payments must go on for a minimum of seven years and it is stipulated that the donors receive no benefit from the scheme; this precludes parents from making covenants on behalf of their own children. • In practice, the idea works some- 1 thing like this. A man with a recently arrived grandchild covenants to pay a trustee, perhaps, a gross amount of £Bl less the income tax on this amount, which at the present rate is about £34. . So the actual payment is £47 a ’ year. At the end of 12 years there will be £133 a year for five years . towards the child’s education. . Surtax payers also get surtax . relief. , Monumental Delay A monument is to be unveiled next week by the Duke of Hamilton at East Fortune Hospital, East Lothian, to commemorate the departure in 1919 of the airship R 34 on the first double crossing of the Atlantic. But it is only one of two which are to be erected. Air Chief Marshal Sir 1 George Pirie, the 60-year-old 1 chairman of the Air League of the ; British Empire, hopes that a 1 commemorative piece of sculpture ! will be set up at the London . Airport. There may also be a : further monument at Long Island, where the airship landed. ; The London airport monument, however, has run into trouble with th. Royal Fine Arts Commission. A well-known sculptor : produced designs which were < submitted to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation; but after he had consulted with the commission these first designs were rejected. A spokesman of the Air League said this week: “After this rejection we were right back where we started.” , Another well-known sculptor has been asked to try his hand. The R 34 set out on July 2, 1919, to make the round voyage, A few weeks previously Alcock and Brown achieved the first nonstop crossing by aeroplane. kitchener’s House Lord Kitchener’s house overlooking the Mall and next door to the official London residence of Mr Selwyn Lloyd. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, is to be rebuilt by the Government at a cost of nearly £90.000, but work has been temporarily delayed because of financial restrictions. Only £lOOO will be spent this year. When the house is ready, the Royal Fine Arts Commission, at present in offices in Queen Anne’s Gate, will move in with other organisations. Bombed during the war, the house has served since as an ideal and quiet nesting place for Trafalgar Square pigeons, though recently some attempt was made to make the ruin look more presentable by painting the outside walls. Kitchener moved into the house at 2 Carlton Gardens a few days after the outbreak of the First World War. He had been stopped at Dover on August 2, 1914. while returning from leave to Egyp* and made Secretary of State for War. He lived in the house near Whitehall until March. ! 1915. A year later he died at sea ! when H.M.S. Hampshire was sunk ’ off the Orkneys. State Portrait The State portrait of the Queen by James Gunn, the Scottish artist, is to be copied by several ’ other painters to be commissioned , by the Ministry of Works. The ; copies—it is not yet decided how many there will be —are to hang in British Embassies and other official posts abroad. The original portrait was painted under difficulty. While Mr Gunn was painting the major portion of it

the Queen was away on her Commonwealth tour. Her Majesty’s robes were therefore suspended on a frame at Buckingham Palace and later the Imperial State Crown was removed from the Tower of London as a model for Mr Gunn. When the portrait was shown at the Royal Academy in 1954 it was the subject of much criticism, but it is understood that there have been some changes in the painting since then. Choice of Beards Beards are reported to be ten times more popular in Britain today than they were before the war. And they are the latest tool in the hairdressers’ campaign to force customers to make decisions on styles instead of lying supine in the barbers chair. Bearded persons are quite likely to be asked by the hairdresser: “The Diplomatic or the Executive, sir?” The “Diplomatic” is a neat spade shape—short, slightly squared, shaved clean on the cheeks and under the ears. The “Executive” has been described as a modernised Montague Norman. It boasts a neat point which is said to make its wearer look “penetrating and businesslike.” Modern Gaelic Mr James MacPhee, President of Comunn na Gaidhlig an Lunnain—the Gaelic Society of London—says his members are anxious to keep Gaelic as a living language. So they are running a competition in connexion with their London mod on June 22 to find new Gaelic equivalents for 20 modern words. The list includes “conservative,” “socialism,” "typewriter,” “organisation,” and “atmosphere.”