Electric Staff in Victoria

[jdennis@acslink.net.au (John Dennis)]

Greetings all.

Apologies for the long posting, but recently I was involved in a
discussion regarding the long section and short section staffs
(staves?) at Puffing Billy.  This discussion then moved on to the
application of Electric Staff in Victoria.

Now, I used to know all of this, but time marches on and my books are
in storage.  So, I am looking for confirmation and comments.

IIRC, there were two different types of electric staffs which could be
split.  One, when withdrawn, could be unscrewed into two halves, which
were then able to be used under Train Staff and Ticket rules with an
intermediate station opened as a temporary staff station.

The other style of staff could be split into two or three sections.
One of these was the "staff", and the others were "tickets".  This
type of staff allowed following movements through a section - the
first train ran through on the ticket portion of the staff, and after
arriving at an intermediate block post, a following train could run no
the staff portion.  When both (or all three) trains arrived at the far
end the staff was combined and sunk into the machine.

One of these was called "divisible" and the other "composite" - I
think in the order I have described them.  Any comments?

A further query.  When first introduced into Victoria, the Electric
Staff instruments required a person at either end to coordinate to
release a staff.  To my knowledge the first (or maybe an early)
implementation of Automatic ES - where a staff could be removed from
an instrument without an operator at each end - was at Mysia and
Barraport on the Robinvale line.  In this case there was only one
unattended station between attended stations.  Is this true?
Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge these two unattended
stations were equipped with three-position automatic upper quadrant
signals.

Subsequently the use of automatic electric staff was extended
so it could be used in a series of unattended stations and implemented
on the Gheringhap-Cressy-Maroona line.  True?

What other states used what VR termed automatic electric staff, and
where else was it in use in Victoria?

Once again, apologies for the length of the posting.

Cheers...JD

==========================================================
John Dennis                         jdennis@acslink.net.au
Melbourne                                  denjo02@cai.com
Australia                   Home of the Dutton Bay Tramway
DBT URL:       http://www.acslink.net.au/~jdennis/dbt.html