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Original Text (Annotation: EAW011198 / 583479)
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North London Line electric train leaving Broad Street.
How do I know it is leaving? It has an oil tail lamp on the back.
You may ask why electric trains ran with oil tail lamps until for over sixty years? If the power supply went down the light would go out as there were no batteries in the circuit for the light to draw power. And, on a mixed railway if the train power supply went down it did not mean other trains (steam could and late diesel) could not be on the move, leaving a stranded electric train with no visual rear protection.
From around the mid 1980s better on board supply allowed fixed electric lights at the back of electric trains to become standard, so saving the use of hundreds of oil lamps and all the time it took to manage and position them. '