IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT PORTIONS OF RAILWAY TRAINS
Year: 1875

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Barlement Michel Siégris at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
15th September 1875.
I, BARLEMENT MICHEL SIÉGRIS, of 119, Salisbury Square, Fleet Street,
London, E.C., Master of Foreign Languages at Dulwich College, do
hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN
APPARATUS FOR COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT PORTIONS OF RAILWAY
TRAINS," to be as follows: —
i
These improvements consist mainly in a pneumatic arrangement, by
which any passenger of a train is enabled to give a signal to both the
guard and engine driver, as also by the same arrangement the guard
may give an alarm signal to the driver, and vice versa. In case of "one
or more carriages breaking their. couplings the driver as well as the
guard will likewise be warned by this apparatus, which, then becomes
self-acting, and will put the brakes on.
The devices I employ for carrying this Invention into effect consist
chiefly of a continuous tube or duct extending along the line of
carriages, and ending or discharging at both ends in pneumatic recipients

page_text: suitably placed in the guard's van, and on the locomotive or tender.
These recipients have the form of bladders or air bags, cylinders, balls,
spherical or spheroidal vessels of india-rubber, or other elastic or merely
flexible material, which can be inflated by the engineer and guard
through a mouth-piece with a return tap; or they may simply be filled
by letting the atmospheric air in. The recipients are weighted at the
top with a moveable weight so as to produce a collapsing pressure,
which may also be obtained by means of a spring arrangement to be
thrown out of action whilst the recipients-are-being filled or inflated.
Pumps or other pneumatic device may also be used for inflating the
recipients, which need hardly cube more than one foot, so as not to
occupy too much valuable space. On the aforesaid continuous tube a
branch pipe is fixed outside of each carriage, and this branch pipe is
fitted with a small cock or valve which can be turned on by means of a
lever and pull strings or chains, passing over guide rollers and entering
the carriage within easy reach of every traveller. I form the con-
nection or coupling between each carriage and the next by means of
ends of india-rubber or flexible metal tubes or hose attached to the
fixed piping of the carriage. At the end of each carriage I provide a
kind of stuffing box made of any suitable material with a side or elbow.
branch pipe to which is attached the flexible connecting tube of suitable
length so as to hang loose between the carriages. The end of this
tubing carries an olive-shaped nozzle which is inserted into the stuffing
box of the next carriage, and these stuffing boxes being all alike it is
evident that the connection can be made in either direction from any
carriage to the next."
In order to close the pneumatic column and make it available for
communication, the nozzle of the connecting tube of the last carriage, is
inserted in its own stuffing box. The solid portions of the coupling may
be made of brass, tin plate, or any other suitable material.
The apparatus acts as follows:-When a passenger_wanting the train
to be stopped-pulls-the-alarm string-next to him or her, the small cock
or valve above described opens, and the air in the recipients at both ends
escapes through it, causing the recipients to collapse by the sheer
pressure of the weight or spring, and thus announce the danger by
means of a gong or other alarm signal worked by an escape lever, or by
the mere fact of the recipients collapsing. At the same time, the lever

page_text: by which the alarm cock is worked will have been raised on the top of
the carriage into a vertical position, and carrying a white disc or other
conspicuous signal at its end, will tell both the guard and driver the
compartment and carriage where assistance may really be needed, or
whether and where a false alarm may have been raised wantonly.