Neale and Neale

John Neale invented block instrument; his son J E Neale came up with a token dispensing technique

Thanks to these columns, I am regarded as an expert on Indian Railways (IR), the organisation as well as the network, though I am no expert on either. Hence, someone recently asked me the following question. “When I was young, I used to see the engine driver hurl something towards the platform as the train sped past and pick up something in return.  What was that?” A block is a section of the track, such as that between two stations. (I am simplifying matters a bit. If the distance between two stations is quite a bit, there may be more than one block between the stations.) If one train enters a block, no other train must be allowed to enter it. This becomes even more important for single lines, where there can be trains from either direction. Before the present train in the block exits, no other train can be allowed entry into the block. That coordination of exit/entry can be done through various means and the use of technology facilitates more modern methods. However, even in those early years, all coordination wasn’t done through physical tokens. For instance, tracks with double lines often didn’t use physical tokens. However, tracks with single lines, with greater danger of collisions, often used physical tokens, carried by crew on trains.
 
What my friend witnessed when young was probably the handing over (and taking) of Neale’s token.  Everything one reads about history, even it is widely repeated, must be scrutinised. There was a John Neale who was born in 1833 and died in 1901. Eventually, in 1870, he became telegraph superintendent and electrical engineer to the North Staffordshire Railway Company. In 1873, he patented a block instrument that could show the number of trains in a block. As far as I can make out from John Neale’s obituary notice, this was installed in single line sections of Staffordshire Railway Company. John Neale’s son was J E Neale, telegraph superintendent of Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and every account of IR history credits this Neale with having “invented” Neale’s token. I can’t resist the impulse to quote from a textbook on IR signal engineering, authored by Pramod Goel, despite it sounding rather technical. “The block instrument is designed such that: Only one token can be extracted at one time from either of the block instruments placing at adjoining stations… It shall not be possible to extract a token from either of the paired block instrument after one token has been extracted making the pair out of phase, unless the token has been inserted into any of the two instruments thereby restoring the phase to original.”
 

THEN AND NOW Railway officials at work in the control room of a station in Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh. In an earlier era, before entering a block, the engine driver would pick up a physical token. Until he deposited it, no other train could enter the block

Note that a physical token wasn’t always necessary. A combination of interlocking and semaphore signals would also suffice, without anything being carried by the train crew. Note that when a physical token was used, it didn’t necessarily have to be Neale’s, though it was the most common. There were others, by Theobald, Webb and Thompson, Tyer and Robert. That quote from the textbook gives you the sense of what a physical token does. Prior to entering a block, the engine driver picks up the physical token and the system ensures that not more than one token is simultaneously issued for the same block. Until he has surrenders the token, no other train can enter the block. Note that Neale’s physical token came in three different forms — ball, voucher and tablet, ball being the most common. In the case of a ball, there was a steel ball inside a racket-shaped ring or hoop, with a pouch for the ball inside it. (The pouch had other instructions for the driver, too.) As the train zipped past, the engine driver flung out one hoop and deftly picked up another and it obviously required great skill to do this. In 1933, South Indian Railway first used such a token on its single line meter gauge track and Neale’s ball token became quite common in the 1940s.
 
Since Neale, the father, invented and patented a block instrument, what did Neale, the son, “invent”? This is what I meant by scrutinising what is often stated. I haven’t been able to track down a patent, or design, by Neale, the son.  (Perhaps some researcher can help.)  Here is what I think happened. The father invented a block instrument, the son chipped in with a token dispensing technique and improved on the father’s block instrument. I read somewhere that the Karjat-Khopoli (15 km) EMU/local train still uses Neale’s ball token. But elsewhere, there is the Amritha Express (train number 16343) between Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad. In June 2016, this was the last train to use Neale’s ball token and physical tokens became part of history and memorabilia. An afterword on John Edward Neale, the son, from an obituary notice again.  He was born in 1870 and joined GIPR as assistant telegraph superintendent in 1893, becoming telegraph superintendent in 1898. He died in 1911, having “invented” a “voucher block instrument for single-line working”. What’s the difference between a block instrument and a voucher block instrument? Minor differences apart, the major distinction is in the way the instrument receives and releases the ball. That’s the reason I focused on token dispensation.  Naturally, there were several instruments with incremental improvements, not just block and voucher block. But while crediting the son, John Edward Neale, let’s not forget the father, John Neale.

The writer is a member of the National Institution for Transforming India Aayog. The views are personal