MYSTERIOUS VOICES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 378, 15 July 1911, Page 6

MYSTERIOUS VOICES.

TRAMS AND THE MEAGPHONE. A mysterious deep-toned voice, which might have belonged to an invisible giant, • startled passengers ■ waiting for tramway cars in the new queue station at the Blackfriars end of the Embankment in London a few weeks ago. It gave uncanny directions from the roof. The voice represented the latest development in tramway organisation —an installation of two megaphonetelephones, from which are announced the de-jtination and vacant seating capacity of the approaching cars. The queue station enabled an acceleration of the services to be made, and is about seventy yards long, and provides for three queues of people. Two megaphones are fixed in the roof above the two exits, and a tramway inspector stands ready to chain off or release the moving queues. Another inspector about 150 yards nearer the coming cars, is in charge of a telephone fixed to a lamp post. He informs the queue inspector of the destination and capacity of the cars: "Clapham 68 vacancies," says the megaphone, and the inspector counts out 68 passengers in the queue and fixes the chain against the rest. The telephone has its producing power intensified by special devices, and yet again magnified by the megaphone trumpet overhead.