A STARTLING INVENTION.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4681, 8 January 1884, Page 2

A STARTLING INVENTION.

Mr W. A. Murray, when he was M.H,B. for Bruce, used to devote his talents to the task of inventing new constitutions for the colony, and new schemes of finance. None of these, however, startled the country by their originality or adaptability to the purposes intended, and Mr Murray's new ideas were voted flat, stale, and unprofitable. He is out of polities, now, and has something else,to, think of than new constitutional and financial nostrums. Still his mind runs in the inventive groove. He is before Government now with a grand scheme for preventing the possibility of railway colli* sions, and wishes to have facilities granted him for a testof hisplan. What Mr Murray claims for his latest invention is'tbat no train, whether under control or otherwise, may come within a less distance un« checked of any other train or place than the railway management may determine. It dispenses with all existing signals, and provides an automatic block system. It gives an alarm signal, stops the locomotive, turns on the brakes, and being en* tirely self-acting, is not liable to accident from forgetful ness, color blindness,-or neglect of railway servants; and, while thus vastly increasing the public safety, the saving of signalmen and present expenses on the imperfect system hitherto in force would more than cover the cost of construction and annual maintenance. It will cost only £100 per mile to apply it, and £1 per mile per annum to work it.— Otago Times.