The Victorian Reports Volume 2; 1870-73 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1876 Excerpt: ...and also for proper intervals between each, so that all might with reasonable certainty arrive safely at their destination. What those arrangements should be it is not for us to prescribe; we cannot hut think, however, that this safety ought not to be dependent on one train being, or not being, distinctly visible to the other. There is no evidence as to the rate of speed at which the engine ought to have passed the North Sandridge station, but taking it for granted that an interval of three minutes is sufficient to guard against all probable contingencies, it does not appear precisely when cither the train or the engine left Melbourne. Two witnesses fix the departure of the train at 5.55, or seven minutes late; one at 5.52, or four minutes late; and one at 5.51, or three minutes late. Had the train started punctually it might have been comparatively easy to ascertain whether the engine did so also, at three, or not less than three, minutes after; but the evidence as regards the engine is merely that it was at the gates, a short distance from the North Sandridge station, at 5.57, the train, according to the same witness, having then been four minutes from Melbourne, or, in other words, having started at 5.53. If the engine left at 5.56, or three minutes after, it seems highly improbable it could have reached these gates in one minute. All this evidence fends to show great uncertainty as to the time of departure of both train and engine, an uncertainty which becomes of much more importance in consequence of the short distance between Melbourne and Sandridge, and the shorter still between Melbourne and North Sandridge, three minutes only being the time between the two latter, and five minutes between the two former; thus allowing scarcely any means for one tra...