Whereas the sectional appendix was intended to give information of a local nature, the General Appendix was intended to contain instructions applicable to the whole railway network. The issue to which I refer in this page was, like the Sectional Appendix, dated October 1st, 1960. Some of the instructions contained within the General Appendix take us back to the days of country stations, milk churns clanking and an altogether slower way of life. There are regulations relating to homing pigeons, "Dealers, Drovers and others in charge of livestock", "Damage to casks or cases containing wines, spirits, tobacco or other dutiable articles" and the attention to be afforded to, "Vehicles containing motor cars, horses, corpses etc…..". Details were given of the various headlamp combinations to be displayed on different classes of train, diagrams of couplings, and a handy table to work out the speed of trains. ("900 divided by the number of seconds occupied by a train travelling between two consecutive quarter-mile posts will give the speed of the train in miles per hour").
So lets open the yellowed pages and head back to the early 1960s with a selection of diagrams and trivia.
Obviously these selfsame couplers are in daily use to this day, but the diagrams are gems and hark back to the days when it was not enough for railwaymen to know that something worked: they had to have a detailed understanding of why and how it worked.
Standard code of engine headlamps or discs.
Railway Sketching
In the event of an accident or other incident, it was essential that railwaymen could illustrate the circumstances in a standard way, clearly understood by all.