Note 20 — Chapter XVIII

"As an instance of the possibility of preventing the mistakes so often made by signal men with conflicting signals or with facing points I have shown the traffic for a single day, and at certain hours of that day, at the Cannon Street station of the South Eastern Railway, already referred to as one of the no-accident lines of the year. The traffic of that station, with trains continually crossing one another, by daylight and in darkness, in fog or in sunshine, amounts to more than 130 trains in three hours in the morning, and a similar number in the evening; and, altogether, to 652 trains, conveying more than 35,000 passengers in the day as a winter, or 40,000 passengers a day as a summer average. It is probably not too much to say, that without the signal and point arrangements which have there been supplied, and the system of interlocking which has there been so carefully carried out, the signalmen could not carry on their duties for one hour without accident." Captain Tyler's report on accidents for 1870, p. 35.