As giving an idea of the old way of signalling and precautions employed
to ensure safety on the Hudson River Railroad nearly forty years ago, we
append the following from the _Albany Journal_. It should be premised
that this road extends from New York to East Albany, a distance of only
144 miles:—
“AN ARMY WITH BANNERS.—As you are whirled along over the Hudson River
Railroad at the rate of 40 miles an hour, you catch a glimpse, every
minute or two, of a man waving something like a white pocket handkerchief
on the end of a stick, with a satisfactory sort of expression of
countenance. If you take the trouble to count, you will find that it
happens some two hundred times between East Albany and Thirty-first
street. It looks like rather a useless ceremony, at first glance, but is
a pretty important one, nevertheless.
“There are 225 of these ‘flagmen’ stationed at intervals along the whole
length of the line. Just before a train is to pass, each one walks over
his “beat,” and looks to see that every track and tie, every tunnel,
switch, rail, clamp, and rivet, is in good order and free from
obstruction. If so, he takes his stand with a white flag and waves it to
the approaching train as a signal to ‘come on’—and come on it does, at
full speed. If there is anything wrong, he waves a red flag, or at night
a red lamp, and the engineer, on seeing it, promptly shuts off the steam,
and sounds the whistle to ‘put down the brakes.’ Every inch of the road
is carefully examined after the passage of each train. Austrian
espionage is hardly more strict.”