OPERATING THE RAILROAD
AUTHORITY OF THE CHIEF CLERK AND THAT OF THE ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT--
RESPONSIBILITIES OF ENGINEERS, FIREMEN, MASTER MECHANIC, TRAIN-MASTER,
TRAIN-DESPATCHER--ARRANGING THE TIME-TABLE--FUNDAMENTAL RULES OF
OPERATION--SIGNALS--SELECTING ENGINE AND CARS FOR A TRAIN--CLERICAL
WORK OF CONDUCTORS--A TRIP WITH THE CONDUCTOR--THE DESPATCHER'S
AUTHORITY--SIGNALS ALONG THE LINE--MAINTENANCE OF WAY--SUPERINTENDENT
OF BRIDGES AND BUILDINGS--ROAD-MASTER--SECTION BOSS.
The administration of the division runs quite naturally into several
channels. The routine of the work, the making and filing of records and
reports, the handling of the mass of correspondence that must constantly
arise, is usually in the hands of a chief clerk, who has control over the
office force at division headquarters. If there is an assistant
superintendent, the chief clerk will divide responsibility with him, the
theory at all times being to cut off the detail wherever possible. This
office work is not radically different from the office management of any
other large business. Its clerks are about the only unorganized force in
railroad employ.
If the management of the road is of the divisional type, the
superintendent of course is a more important executive than if it is of
the departmental type. In either of these cases, as we have seen, he will
probably have at least partial authority over the engineer of maintenance
of way, whose force keeps the line and track structures in full repair,
and also looks after ordinary construction work along the division. In the
road of divisional type, he will also have partial authority over the
master mechanic, in charge of the shops and roundhouses and the
locomotives of the division. These last are regarded by the railroad as
part of its machinery, like the planers and drills in the shops
themselves; and for the care and operation of the locomotives the
engineers and firemen are held responsible to the mechanical department.
This is the case even upon those railroads where, under the departmental
system, the superintendent has no direct authority over the master
mechanic upon his division. For the conduct of the trains which their
locomotives pull, both engineers and firemen are directly responsible to
the operating department. The master mechanic simply sees to it that the
railroad's property is maintained to a certain degree of efficiency and
that the man who operates the locomotives is capable from every point of
view. A reasonable amount of deterioration is expected, and each
locomotive is expected to turn in to the shops for inspection, overhauling
and repairs, at certain stated intervals.
The superintendent has absolute authority over the two officials who are
chiefly interested in the conduct of the trains over the division--the
train-master and the train-despatcher. The first of these two officers,
who must dove-tail their work both night and day, has the assignment of
the train crews. His opinion will be called for whenever the vexed
questions of seniority and promotion arise, and he will be asked to help
to plan all extra or special freight and passenger trains. To show how
this is done brings us close to the question of schedules, and we may
pause for a moment to consider how this important phase of the railroad's
operating is builded together.
That time-table that you have just pulled from the folder rack seems at
first glance an interminable mass of meaningless figures; yet when you
come to find your journey upon it, it quickly simplifies itself, and you
begin to marvel at the relation the figures bear to one another, how
easily you may pick your course through the long columns of numerals. The
more extensive time-tables that the railroad employees carry are quite as
simple, and yet they are great feats of typographical composition. In
reality, both these forms of printed time-tables are but transcripts of
the real time-table of the division, which is kept set out upon a great
board.
This board is ruled in two directions. The regularly spaced intervals in
one direction are marked as time, and represent time--one entire day of
twenty-four hours. In the other direction of the board the stations are
spaced in proportion to their actual spacing upon the line.
The reproduction of a portion of such a board for an imaginary division of
a railroad will illustrate. This line runs from Somerset to Rockville, 120
miles; and portions of it are double-tracked, the rest single-track, as
shown at the top of the diagram. On the double-track, trains going in the
same direction may pass one another only at the vertical lines, which
represent station passing sidings, and on the single-track sections this
rule holds, with the additional one, of course, that trains running in
opposite directions may also pass one another at the vertical station
lines. For economy of room only the seven hours from six o'clock in the
morning until one o'clock in the afternoon are shown here. Following an
old-time practice, odd numbers will represent up-bound trains, from
Somerset to Rockville; even numbers, the down trains.
So we have an early morning accommodation passenger train, No. 1, leaving
Rockville at 6:10 o'clock and proceeding at a leisurely rate of about
twenty miles an hour (which makes allowances for local stops) all the way
to Somerset at the far end of the division, which it is due to reach at
11:45 A. M. It is halted for any length of time only at Honeytown, where
upbound No. 8--local accommodation--and upbound No. 6--fast express--will
pass it. At 6:20 o'clock an upbound local accommodation of the same nature
as No. 1, and hence known as No. 2, leaves Somerset and, halting only at
Robbins's Corners to permit the fast upbound No. 6 to overhaul and pass
it, reaches Rockville at 1 P. M. Train No. 31, which follows No. 1 out of
Rockville forty minutes later, is a milk train, and so must have a
liberal allowance for stops. It proceeds only as far as Stoneville, where
the dairy country ends, stops there long enough to turn and to water the
engine, and then returns to Rockville as No. 32. Train No. 117 is a
way-freight, and still slower. So it follows the milk-train. It is known
as a "low-class" train by the railroaders. It must wait everywhere for
better class trains to pass it. Train No. 118 is the same class of train,
proceeding in the opposing direction. Train No. 5 is a down express.
[Illustration: HOW THE REAL TIME TABLE OF THE DIVISION LOOKS--THE ONE USED
IN HEADQUARTERS]
Sometimes unforeseen demands of traffic necessitate the running of extra
trains, and these may be strung across the board. This board, in reality,
has all its trains placed upon it by strings and pins, to admit of the
constant changes that the schedules are always undergoing, and the
addition of a new train is a quick proceeding. As a matter of fact, a
skilled train-master or despatcher will rarely take the time actually to
string an extra train. He carries the schedule too completely in his head
to admit of such a necessity.
But the extra train is best placed following, as a second section, some
good passenger train, as indicated on the diagram. The regular train will
then carry signals showing that it is followed on this particular day.
While the train orders protect its movement in any event, as will be shown
in a moment, the billing of the extra train as a second section is less of
an upset to the regular operation of the division. Practised operating men
found years ago that the fewer deviations made from the regular programme
of the day, the higher the proportion of safety arose.
Now you begin to see the use of the train-despatcher. If the unforeseen
never came to pass upon the railroad, instead of coming to pass nearly
every hour, there might be no need of that officer. Each engineer, each
conductor, each station agent would have his complete time-tables, and the
road would run every day in full accordance with them. That was the very
earliest and the most primitive way of operating railroads. Almost as
early the need arose of having a special direction over the operation of
the trains. Emergencies arose daily. Trains were often late; storms beat
down upon the line; the snow covered its rails; what might have been,
according to the time-card, an orderly operation of line, became chaos. If
a train was ordered by schedule to meet a train bound in the opposite
direction at P----, it might wait there for long hours, not knowing that
the other engine was broken down at A----.
The invention of the telegraph and its almost instant application to the
railroad service made such special direction possible. So now we find the
explicit directions of the schedule supplemented by even more explicit
directions from the train-despatcher at the head of the train movements
upon each division. Briefly stated, it may be said that the engineer and
the conductor in charge of a train are first guided by the schedule,
which, after many revisions, has been compiled with great care, and in
reference to connecting lines, branches, and adjoining divisions. This
schedule acts in conjunction with certain simple fundamental rules of
operation, the A, B, C of every railroader. By one of these, trains of the
same class bound north or east are given precedence, all other things
being equal, over trains bound south or west. This rule is sometimes
superseded by one giving right-of-way to trains bound up the line--or the
reverse.
High-class trains, like the fastest limited expresses, have precedence
over trains of graduated lower classes--down to the slow-moving heavy
freights. When any sort of train loses a certain length of time--usually
half an hour or more--it loses all rights that it might ever have had, and
everything else on the line has precedence over it. A train may lose time
if it has to, but there are never any circumstances that will justify it
in running ahead of time.
All this is the part of railroad operation which governs the relation of
one train to another. There are even simpler but not less vital rules
that control its own operation. In order that the engineer who is guiding
the train, and the conductor who shares the responsibility, may keep in
touch with one another, the device was adopted many years ago of having a
cord run through the cars of passenger trains to a bell signal in the cab
of the engine. This bell signal during recent years has given way to an
improved form of locomotive signal, sounded by means of compressed air in
tubes throughout the train, and operated in connection with the air-brake
equipment.
The air-whistle, or bell cord-code of signals, is standard upon all
American railroads, and is as follows:
When the train is standing:
Two signals--start.
Three signals--back.
Four signals--apply or release air-brakes.
Five signals--call in flagman.
When the train is in motion:
Two signals--stop at once.
Three signals--stop at the next station.
Four signals--reduce speed.
Five signals--increase speed.
There also arises a necessity for communication between men who stand
outside the train and who seek to guide the movement of the locomotive.
This necessity has given rise to still another code, transmitted by the
hands--holding a flag, if possible--by day, and a lighted lantern at
night. This signal code follows:
Method of Transmitting Signal. Indication.
Swung across track. Stop.
Raised and lowered vertically. Proceed.
Swung vertically in a circle across the track:
When the train is standing-- Back.
When train is in motion-- Train has parted.
Swung horizontally in a circle:
When the train is standing-- Apply air-brakes.
Held at arm's length above head:
When the train is standing-- Release air-brakes.
Any object waved violently by any person on
or near the track is a stop signal.
By use of his locomotive whistle, the engineer is enabled to acknowledge
these signals, as well as to signal upon his own initiative. His code is
also a standard in railroading. It follows:
---- A short blast. -------- A long blast.
---- Stop, apply brakes.
-------- -------- Release brakes.
---- ---- -------- -------- -------- Flagman go back
---- -------- -------- -------- and protect rear
end of train.
------- -------- -------- -------- Flagman return to
train.
-------- -------- -------- Train in motion,
has parted.
---- ---- Acknowledgment of
signals, not otherwise
provided for.
---- ---- ---- Standing train--back.
---- ---- ---- ---- Call for signals.
-------- ---- ---- Calls attention to
following section.
-------- -------- ---- ---- Highway crossing
signal.
---------------- Approaching stations,
junctions or
railroad crossings
at grade.
A succession of short blasts is an alarm for persons on the track and
calls the attention of trainmen to danger ahead.
These signal codes operate fundamentally in connection with the essential
rules of schedule that we have already shown.
Suppose now that we consider the workings of all this system as it comes
down to actual practice in a single concrete instance. We are finding our
way to a big terminal yard in all the murkiness and cloudiness of very
early morning, and once again we hunt out that urbane soul, the
yardmaster. He holds in his hand the yellow tissue of an order from the
despatcher of the division. In the conciseness of telegraphy it tells him
to start a third section of train 118--through freight--at 6:15 o'clock.
Just back of his little grimy box of an office is the big sprawling
roundhouse--a dozen freighters with banked fires standing in the stalls,
awaiting summons to work. The twelve engines are divided into several
classifications according to pulling strength and speed, but the
despatcher has designated the particular engine he wishes for third-118,
and he gets it--a big lanky puller--1847. She is chosen chiefly because
she has had the longest roundhouse rest, having brought in a through
freight from up the line, and having been received with engineer's report
showing her to be in good running order, at five o'clock yesterday
afternoon. Before the 1847 slipped from the turntable into the waiting
stall, the hostlers and the wipers were at her. The hostlers had taken her
over the cinder-pit and cleaned out the fire-box. Then they went over her,
cleaning her, inch by inch, a mechanical inspector in their wake, testing
and sounding and checking every item in the engineer's report which showed
1847 to be in good order at the end of his run with her. There was not
much chance left for any shirking of responsibility, no matter what might
arise upon the 1847 on any coming day.
We turn and watch the yardmaster once again. He has the roundhouse foreman
send one of the bright young boys who hang around his office night and
day, and who dream of that coming hour when they will handle an 1847 for
themselves, to call the engineer and fireman, whose names are posted
"first out." Or perhaps the telephone has come into play--in these days in
the smaller towns there is hardly a house too humble to have receiver and
transmitter hanging somewhere upon its walls. In any event the engine-crew
are supposed to stay home when off duty, unless especially excused, and to
live within reasonable distance--say a mile--of the roundhouse.
The caller tells the engineer and fireman to report at the roundhouse at
5:45 A. M. At that hour the hostlers have made the 1847 fit for service.
Her tender has been filled with coal, her tanks with water, even her sand
is packed aboard the box that stands upon the boiler and is ready to help
on slippery rail and upgrade. The engineer makes keen inspection of the
1847 before he moves her a single inch, makes sure with his keen and
practised eye that she is quite fit for service, pokes here and there and
everywhere with his long-spouted oil-can. At a minute or two after shop
whistles have shrieked "six o'clock" he pulls the 1847 out from the
shadows of the roundhouse. He gets an open signal and switch to the main
yard and finds waiting on a siding in that great place, the trail of
freight cars and the caboose that are going with him to make Third-118.
Now come back for a moment in your thought. While we were still scurrying
down to the grimy yard, the despatcher was creating Third-118. On his desk
were car reports, showing what had been received and sent out, and there
was enough accumulation of stuff in the yards last night to justify a
Third-118. Because good railroading means yard-sidings cleared, and
standing cars and freight, like passengers, kept constantly moving, he did
not hesitate at ordering her out. He found that there would be 32 cars
between tender and caboose, weighing approximately some 1200 tons, and so
he ordered from the roundhouse an engine of a class which the mechanical
department guaranteed capable of pulling from 1,000 to 1,500 tons,
gross weight.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of the "Railroad Age Gazette"_
THE ELECTRO-PNEUMATIC SIGNAL-BOX IN THE CONTROL TOWER OF A MODERN
TERMINAL]
[Illustration: THE RESPONSIBLE MEN WHO STAND AT THE SWITCH-TOWER OF A
MODERN TERMINAL: A LARGE TOWER OF THE "MANUAL" TYPE]
[Illustration: "WHEN WINTER COMES UPON THE LINES THE SUPERINTENDENT WILL
HAVE FULL USE FOR EVERY ONE OF HIS WITS"]
[Illustration: WATCHFUL SIGNALS GUARDING THE MAIN LINE OF A BUSY RAILROAD]
The yardmaster had given the numbers of the cars that were to make
Third-118, just as he received them from one of the despatcher's
assistants, to a switching foreman, who arranged them, with the quick
facility that comes from long practice, into an order that would permit
them to be set off at various points up the line, with the least possible
amount of switching. That practical sequence worked out in pencil and
paper, a stubby switch-engine effected in reality. The cars and the
caboose, in proper order, were ready, with the crew, and inspected when
the 1847 backed to them and Third-118 came into her being.
A yard caller had summoned the train-crew while the roundhouse caller was
rounding up the two men of the engine-crew. Collins, the conductor, and
his brakemen had reported at the yard-office, and were assigned to
Third-118. Collins found the cars and caboose waiting just a few minutes
before the 1847 had been coupled to them, with little ado and no formality
whatsoever, beyond the testing of the air-brakes. Into his train-book he
had entered the number of each car and the initials of the road owning it,
its destination, its empty or tare weight; the weight of its load, and the
sum of these or its gross weight. He sees to it that each box-car is
firmly seal-locked. If not, he refuses to accept it from the yardmaster
until it has been resealed, and makes a note of the occurrence. Like the
engineer and the hostlers in the roundhouse, he takes no chances, no
responsibilities that do not fairly belong to him.
With both conductor and engineer ready, Third-118 starts upon her day's
run. The yard operator has telegraphed the despatcher's office that 3-118
is awaiting instructions. In that despatch he has given the locomotive
number, the number and total weight of the cars it hauls, the name of both
engineer and conductor. The train-despatcher enters these details of
train and crew at the head of a column of his train register. On that
register there are spaces for the entries of arriving and leaving times of
the train as telegraphed him by the operators at each telegraph station on
the division.
The train once so entered by a despatcher's clerk, the despatcher sends a
clearance card to the telegraph operator at the little yard office who
repeats it back for accuracy. Then the yard operator presents that
clearance order to the engineer and conductor, who read it aloud to
him--also for accuracy, of course--and then sign that they have read and
understood the order. The signatures are then reported to the despatcher's
office, which wires "Complete." "Complete" goes in writing upon the copies
of the order made in manifold, which go to engineer, to conductor, and to
the operator's own files. The engineer reads his order to the fireman, who
repeats it back to him; the conductor follows the same routine with his
brakemen. That all sounds complicated, but quickly becomes mechanical and
rapid; the danger is that it may become so mechanical and rapid as to
permit of serious errors passing unchecked through the routine. But the
railroad has done its part. It has, for itself, taken every possible
precaution against error and resulting accident.
We are privileged, and we climb into the caboose of Third-118. We hold
credentials to Collins, her conductor, and they are unimpeachable. We can
see that from his face as he holds his lantern over them: he would not
even let us into his caboose until his own mind was set. After that there
was barely time to jump aboard. The 1847 is beginning to clear the yard
before we have had time for a good look at the inside of the little
caboose.
"You won't find our hack any fancy place," says Collins. "But we've had it
nine years now, and it seems kind of homelike to us after all this time."
The "we" consists of Collins and his rear brakeman. The forward brakeman,
who is held responsible for the front half of the train, has his
headquarters in the cab of the 1847. The caboose is a home-like place,
snugly warmed by a red-hot stove placed in its corner and lined with bunks
made into beds, Pullman fashion; only never was there a Pullman sleeper
that gave you less sense of the impressive and a greater sense of a snug
cabin. Squarely placed in its centre is a sort of wooden pyramid and the
steps up this lead to the lookout from where the long snaky train can be
watched.
"Kind o' ol'-fashioned, that," apologizes Collins. "Th' las' time I had
th' cabin into the shops for over-haulin', they offered to take it out an'
put in th' ladders; but I says 'no'; an' this is why."
One by one he lifts its hinged steps. This is a pyramid built of lockers,
a regular treasure house of railroad necessities. There are all sorts of
ropes and jacks and wrenches, extra parts against every emergency. There
is a food closet, and another locker filled with neat stacks of
stationery.
"They give us more forms to fill out now than th' super's office got
twenty years ago," he laughs. "I spend more than half my time at that
desk."
The clerical work on Third-118 is considerable. Collins has to keep all
the way-bills of his train--32 cars, almost $100,000 worth of merchandise,
and if he makes a serious error it is apt to cost him his job. He writes a
neat hand, and his records, like his caboose, are kept in ship-shape
fashion. He is a careful student of the ethics and the practices of
railroad management and operation. He has his own ideas on each of these,
and when you get to them they are good ideas. Of such as he railroad
executives are every year made in America.
* * * * *
We slip up the line, slowly threading our passage through the mass of
passenger trains, fast and slow, that all times have the right-of-way over
the third sections of rather ordinary freights. Collins sometimes thrusts
his orders into our hands in order that we may see something of the
great detail of this branch of operating. Each is wonderfully specific,
and we know by that "complete" on the corner that it has been given in
detail.
"No. 1 Engine 2236 will wait at Morris Level until 10:00 A. M. for 3-118,
Engine 1847."
The signature is that of the initials of the division superintendent, the
numerals have been spelled out. It would seem as if the railroad had taken
every possible precaution for safety. And yet again, remember that great
accidents have happened upon American railroads just because men's minds
have perversely refused to read what eyes and ears have read. And yet
there seems to be nothing to be done, more thorough than is already being
done.
"Are all these freights upon schedule?" you may ask Collins, after you
meet a few dozen of them within the limits of a single-track division. He
is decent enough not to laugh at your ignorance.
"Schedule?" he repeats. "It's a joke. They give our first section a time
to get out on, in the time-card and then one o' them bright office-boys
gets a figger out o' his head an' puts it down for an arrivin' time. He
never hits it an' he never expects to. So more an' more they're gettin' to
move this freight on special orders. They can better regulate it then,
'cordin' to volume of business. Mos' of the men carry the schedules of the
fas' an' th' way-freights in their domes. Th' coarse tonnage stuff doesn't
even get special orders. When they get enough of it, down on th' main
line, they get an engine out o' th' roundhouse, give the train th' engine
number, and start off. Railroad traffic along the freight end follows
business conditions mighty close."
It is still daylight when we halt at a junction, across a frozen river
from a city. The city is set upon a steep hillside, and its houses rise
from the river in even terraces. At the top a great domed structure--the
State House--crowns it. It is a still winter's morning, and the smoke
from all the chimney-pots extends straight heavenward. We wait patiently
upon a long siding until everything else has been moved--through fast
expresses heavily laden with opulent-looking Pullmans, jerky little
suburban trains, long draughts of empty coaches, being drawn by
consequential switch-engines in and out of the train-shed of the passenger
station. Finally a certain semaphore blade drops, we cross over to the
important main line and begin pulling on a sharp curve, across the river,
clear of the station with its confusion, through and past the city to a
busy division yard.
In a very little time, for this is their home town, Collins and his crew
are registering at the yardmaster's office. The engineer of the 1847, and
his fireman, turn in their time-slips and proceed with the locomotive to
the roundhouse where they make a report upon its condition. Their names
are posted on the "in" list or register, and they are off duty until they
are summoned by the callers at this end of the division. The despatcher
has, of course, been apprised of the safe ending of the run of Third-118.
In the despatcher we have a high type of railroad official who works
almost unknown to the great travelling public, and yet accepts a very
great measure of the responsibility for the safe operation of the lines.
His orders, sent by telegraph and bearing that cabalistic initial
signature of his superintendent, are the products of his own mind. There
can be no mistake in these, and he knows it. Each message that he sends
may produce disaster, and he knows that.
He is an executive of a type that is not to be passed by lightly. He has
risen from the ranks of the telegraphers, most likely from some lonely
country station or forlorn signal-tower, and his knowledge of railroad
operation, both theoretical and practical, must approach perfection. On
sunny, serene days he proceeds with the theoretical railroading; when
storms or unexpected influxes of traffic come to harass the division, he
will need every bit of his practical knowledge. Handling a number of
special trains--freight or passenger--is a strain, and that strain is most
felt at the despatcher's desk.
Now and then your morning paper tells of a railroad wreck, and laconically
adds, "The despatcher was at fault." The stories of the wrecks that were
forestalled by the sheer genius of the men who sit night and day at the
telegraph instruments at headquarters are the stories that are for the
most part untold, and that far surpass in thrill and interest the stories
of the failures.
The despatcher must also be the full measure of a man. He is, like the
silent figure upon the bridge of a great ship, of unquestioned authority
as he sits at his desk. He may or may not have a map of the line before
him as he sits there, but you may be certain that he knows where every
moving train on the division is at the moment you see him, just as clearly
as if it were all visible there to the naked eye in some sort of picture
map. No trains proceed without his express orders. He has "reliefs" and
there is no hour of day or night when one of these is not at the
despatcher's desk, having the work of the line under his exact
supervision.
The order that any train receives from the despatcher by means of the
telegraph will, as we saw in Collins's case, direct it to proceed to a
certain point on the line, and will specify every train, regular or extra,
that it will meet, and the meeting point. When the train has proceeded to
the end of its orders there will be more orders from the train-despatcher
to be receipted for, and so it will proceed to the end of the route. It is
quite possible that at any stage of the journey orders will come from
headquarters nullifying those already issued, in part or entirely; and
these must be accounted for in the same thorough and accurate fashion.
Some of this seems "red tape" to the men on the line, and there come times
when they are a bit disposed to rebel at what seems to them useless
formality. There also come times when trains crash into one another; and
at those times the railroad, with its infinite system of recording its
orders, is generally apt to be able to place the blame pretty accurately.
Those are the times when the system of train orders justifies its worth.
Recently the telephone has come into something more than an experimental
use in despatching trains upon American railroads. Various causes have
contributed to this. For one thing, the use of the telephone enables the
average road to make good use of its veterans, men who would indignantly
refuse to become pensioners, and yet who have come to a time in their
lives when they must set their pace in gentler key. A trusted old
employee, a man crippled perhaps in loyalty to the company's service, a
keen-witted responsible woman, any one of these can competently handle
train orders over a telephone, without having to have the education and
the wonderful expertness that comes only from long experience in
telegraphy; and they all become available in the despatching service.
Still another cause has contributed to the change, which is being reported
each week from some fresh corner of the country--the telegraphers,
themselves. Within the past few years they were able to induce Congress to
reduce their day's work to eight hours. Translated, this meant that the
average way-station which had been manned by one or two operators would
correspondingly need two or three operators. The telegraphers, by reason
of the expert training needed in their business, kept their wage-scale up,
and the railroads felt that eight-hour bill keenly in their treasuries. So
there may have been the least bit of retribution in their seeking the
telephone as a relief. The change has certainly been made in the keen hope
of effecting economy. No railroad operator would feel ashamed to admit
that fine impeachment.
Modern railroading simply makes the same demand of the telephone that it
makes of the telegraph--that it keep the probability of safety high. It
makes the same demand of the men who maintain the signals, the track, the
bridges, and other portions of the right-of-way. Let us consider them in
the passing of an instant.
You know the signals along the line of the railroad--those gaunt, uncanny
things that spell danger or safety to the men in the engine-cabs. A little
while ago, we stood beside a man in the sun-filled tower of a great
railroad terminal and watched him operate the most complicated switch and
signal system in the land, watched him with the crooking of a finger upon
the lever of an electric machine raise this blade, lower that, as he made
new paths for the many trains, coming and going.
A plant of that sort is known as the interlocking. In its simplest form,
it will guard a junction between two single tracks. The mast of the signal
will rise, according to standard custom, at the right of the track in the
direction of travel, and there will probably be two semaphore blades, the
upper of which guards and signals the straight main-line or "superior"
track, the lower, the diverging branch, known as the "inferior" track. The
blade raised--automatically showing a red light--indicates that the main
line is closed to the engineer. "Stop!" "Danger!" are the words it tells
him. The blade lowered, a green light is automatically displayed, and the
engineer knows that he can go ahead at full speed on the main line. The
road is clear for him. The lower blade gives similar indications for the
branch diverging line. Normally, both blades stand at "stop" and "danger,"
and the one guarding the line for which the train is destined, is dropped
only on the approach of the train, itself. In fact, to facilitate the
movement of trains, these guarding signals--known to the signal experts as
"home signals"--are generally interlocked with "distant signals" several
hundred feet down the line, on which blades indicating the diverging
tracks forecast the story that the "home signal" is to tell the engineer.
The blade raised--by night displaying a white or safety signal--on the
"distant signal" indicates that the line it guards is blocked at the
"home signal," and that the engineer must be prepared to bring his train
to a full stop. Dropped--showing the green safety light--that particular
line is open and ready, and the engineer can be prepared to pass the
junction without a very great diminution of speed.
That is the fundamental rule of the signal. Some roads have experimented
with other forms of indicators--disks of one sort or another, semaphore
blades that turn upwards rather than drop. The devices are numerous, but
the principle is the same. When the tracks begin to multiply, and the
signals begin to multiply in even greater proportion, they are generally
carried over the tracks on a light bridge construction--our English
cousins call it a "gantry"--and a series of small semaphore masts built up
from the bridge. One of these masts, or "dolls," will be assigned to each
track; and if there chances to be an unsignalled siding-track of little
importance passing under the bridge, it will have its own "doll" rising
from the bridge although quite devoid of semaphore blades. So it is all
quite as clear as print to the engineer, even when forty or fifty lights
blink at him from a single bridge. The signals tell their story to him
quite as simply as to the man in the tower, who is setting their blades in
accordance with his carefully arranged plans.
Where signals are not of this interlocking type, guarding some junction,
railroad grade crossing, draw-bridge or other point of possible danger,
they are likely to resolve themselves into the block system. This system,
in a rather crude form, with the use of operators at each block-tower or
way-station, has been in development for something less than thirty years
upon the American railroad. In brief, it divides a line--usually
double-tracked, but sometimes used by the so-called "staff" method upon a
single-track road--into sections, or blocks, of from three to five miles
each. On double-track under this system, no two trains, even though
travelling in the same direction are permitted in the same block. At the
entrance to each block stands a tall mast with two of the conventional
signal blades. The upper of these raised denotes that a train is still in
the block, and an engineer must stop his train and wait till it drops,
before he can proceed. The lower blade, when raised, indicates that a
train is in the second block ahead, and the engineer must proceed only
with caution and expecting to find that block closed against him. It is
all quite simple; and if the engineers followed the signals absolutely,
there never could be any rear-end collisions on lines protected by block
signals. As a matter of fact, there rarely ever are, although the
engineers do take chances time and time again.
"Why should I stop for that thing," said a veteran engineer on a fast
express train as we went whirring by one of those upper blades raised and
commanding us in a blood-red point of light to stop, "when I can look down
this straight stretch and see they're clear? Like as not something's got
into the mechanism of it and let her flop that way."
Do not insult the intelligence of that engineer. A little while before, he
had told us, with a deal of pride, that the rolling stock of "his road"
placed end to end would reach from New York to Omaha, a distance of some
1300 miles. Keenest of the keen, he had a sort of contempt for a rule-book
in such a case as that.
"Isn't it sort of positive?" we began. "Good excuse anyway--"
"It is," he shouted back, "but somehow it don't go if you fall behind on
your running time. We're here to use ordinary good sense--and bring our
trains in on time."
And yet the railroad has a sharp way of insisting upon compliance with
that book of rules by making, once in a great while, surprise tests. A
signal is set at danger, without any more apparent reason than in the case
just cited; a secret watch is kept, and judgment and discipline are
visited upon the heads of the engineers who permit themselves to run past
it.
* * * * *
To operate the signals calls for one body of men, and to maintain them for
faithful service against all manner and stress of wear and weather,
another; just as there must be a working corps to keep the right-of-way in
working order. This last is a mighty brigade of the railroad's army; for
one man in every four who works for it is employed in keeping the track in
order. One dollar in every six that the railroad spends goes for that
purpose.
Maintenance of way on each division divides itself into a superintendent
of bridges and buildings, who sees to the upkeep of those facilities; and
a roadmaster, who specializes upon the track itself. This last officer,
almost invariably one who has begun to shoulder himself up in the ranks of
the railroad army from the very beginning, has his territory divided into
sections from two to five miles in length on double-track, from four to
ten on single. In command of each section a faithful hand-car and a group
of more or less faithful section-hands, figured on an allowance of one to
each mile of track, is a section-boss. The section-boss is a wry and a
wise soul, or should be. He may not know as much about the formulas for
compensating curves as that bright boy who has just come out of a "tech"
school to stand his turn at a transit, but he has a marvellous sort of
intuitive sense in keeping his little stretch of track in order. He can
sight his rail and discover flaws in alignment as a blind man can find
surface flaws with the developed tips of his fingers, and all the while he
may be growling at the railroad management for adding to the weight of its
rolling-stock and "pounding the elevations out of his track."
In summer he is expert with the "track jacks" and constantly putting in
bits of ballast here and there; and in the winter, when the frost and snow
have made it impossible to touch the ballast, he keeps his elevations by
means of "shims." A "shim" is a piece of wood, from shingle thickness to
the width of two ties piled one upon the other, and is wedged between the
tie and the rail till summer comes and the line can be corrected by
ballasting.
The section-boss must keep pace with a job that is no sinecure. If his
gang, in eagerness to be on dress parade, almost throws dirt on the rear
steps of the boss's private car as it goes whizzing down the line, he must
also see to it that they keep plugging at it where there is not even a
locomotive whistle within sound. He must be thrifty, economical. He must
remember that the humble cross-tie which once cost a quarter now costs
almost a dollar, and that for one of these to be found neglected in the
ditch is almost a capital crime. He must have an eye for loose spikes and
angle-plates, for the big boss has hinted at the annual loss to the road
in these simple factors.
At his call and that of the superintendent of bridges and buildings is a
work-train, made up of a few flat-cars and discarded coaches, doing
boarding-house Pullman service in their declining years, which looks after
work too sizable for the section-boss and his little gang, and yet not
large enough for the attention of the dignified gentlemen who are known as
the reconstruction engineers. Yet some of the feats of these work-train
gangs have the crackle of engineering genius. It takes brains to rip out a
little timber span and replace it in the interval between two trains
spaced a couple of hours apart, and in the railroad, brain work often
comes from the shabby workman, from the man who graduates from the command
of his own battered hand-car.
* * * * *
All this elaborate system of railroad operation has been built up through
many years of practice. Experience has been more than a teacher in the
business, which becomes yearly more and more nearly a developed science;
she has been a whole faculty and a curriculum, too. Methods that promised
well at the outset have been found faulty after trial, and rejected.
Committees of trained experts have pondered and reported voluminously; the
standard railroad codes of every sort have been born because of them. The
operation of the railroad has been brought close to science. It would seem
as if the entire field had been completely covered.
And yet new situations constantly arise, the like of which have never
before presented themselves, even to the railroad veterans. Traffic moves
in unequal volume, particularly freight traffic. There are single-track
stretches through the Middle West that starve through eleven months of the
year, and for the other thirty days handle in grain more tonnage than a
double-track trunk-line in the East. Obviously such lines cannot be
double-tracked for thirty days of business; quite as obviously the
overtaxed division, its equipment, and its men must rise to every
necessity of the floodtide of business. There are fat years and there are
lean years. There come years of bumper crops, years when the factory
lights burn from sunset to dawn, and wheels turn unceasingly, and then the
superintendent wonders how his equipment and men are going to stand the
strain. Engines are kept from the shops and in service; nothing that is
even a semblance of a car is kept out of service; the demand for men is
keen; prosperity strains the resources of the railroad.
In the lean years, engines are sometimes kept from the shops because the
railroad feels that it must hold down its running expenses to keep pace
with reduced revenues, and such a course it can stoutly defend as nothing
else than good business. Equipment begins to stand idle. Engines are
tucked away on empty sidings, boarded and forlorn; and if the year be very
lean indeed, the superintendent may find it necessary to send out a
wrecking crane and begin lifting empty cars off the rails and leaving them
in the ditch at the side of the right-of-way, until the golden times come
again. At such seasons his ingenuity is tested quite as much as in the
times of floodtide. Orders come to cut expenses, and his big expense is
the pay-roll. When he begins to blue-pencil that pay-roll, some one is
going to be hungry. The superintendent knows that. He must move with great
care in such emergencies.