THE WASTE OP DAYLIGHT.
LTO TIM EDITOR OF TIM "SPROTATOR.1
think too much may be made of the difficulty of adjusting railway time-tables to the alterations of the clock proposed in Mr. Willett's admirable scheme. Certainly the proposal to leave the railway clocks unaltered would never do, for that would spoil everything. What would be the use of getting up and having one's breakfast by the new time only to find that the train relied on to enable one to reach town at 10 o'clock (new time) did not start for twenty minutes, and would not arrive till 10.20 ? I speak of the week following the first alteration of the clock. No, it is essential that all clocke should be advanced simultaneously, and, strange to say, there need be no alterations at all in railway time-tables. Trains would continue to start and arrive at the scheduled times, only it would be according to the new time instead of the old time. The moment chosen for the change, 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, is suitable enough. On that particular morning there would be a certain amount of irregularity, but nothing more than might any day be caused by a sudden uni. aersal fog . lasting exactly twenty minutes. The best way. of picturing what would happen is to imagine oneself a station- master preparing for events just before 2 a.m. on the first Sunday in April. A train is due to arrive from the North at 2.1, and to continue southwards at 2.6,. some passengers changing in order to go westwards by a train scheduled to leave at 2.15. Remember that the moment the clock strikes 2 it is advanced to 2.20. Practically, therefore, the paper record of railway events on this Morning will be unable to mention any event as occurring between 2 a.m. and 2.20 a.m. For the historian's purpose those twenty minutes are annihi- lated. As the clock strikes, the approaching train, if up to time, is one minute's tun short of the station. It will arrive, not at 2.1, but at " 2.21 " (new time). But passengers by it intending to go westwards by the 2.15 will not have lost their connexion. The trains due to Start betWeen 2 and /20 could obviously none Of them have started *heft the altered Cloak Ottddenly declared the time 2.20. They would be all waiting like a. string of boats at a river lock to •fake their barn. First the express for London, due out at 2.6, would start. By shortening its pause at the station it would probably be got off at 2.23. Then the next in order as little late as poesible, but all atenewhat lath, the 2.15 for the West probably being started lit 2.30. By the nett day things would have' settled down, for all trains would have been started by the revised clock, and would run as usual till the following Sunday, when the same thing would happen again, but with less dislocation, every official being on the qui vire to overcome the difficulty smartly. I cannot conclude without expressing a sincere hope that those convinced of the enormous aditentage to health atid happiness which two hundred hours per summer more daylight wonld be to the whole community will Combine to bring Mr. Willett's scheme more prominently before the public. One grudges that even one more sutiimer should pats withoixt the reform being effected. Never, surely, was a practical reform proposed with so much to recommend it, and so little to be said against it, and so easy to carry out.—I am, Sir, &c., Sandybrook Hall, Ashbourne. PEVERIL TURNBULL.
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