THE YOUNG OPERATORS
Tom Mickey, chief lineman of the Ohio division of the P. & O., was, like
most other human beings, subject to fluctuations of temper; only, with
Tom, the extremes were much farther apart than usual. This was due,
perhaps, to his mixed ancestry, for his father, a volatile Irishman,
had married a phlegmatic German woman, proprietress of a railroad
boarding-house, where Mickey found a safe and comfortable haven, with no
more arduous work to do than to throw out occasionally some objectionable
customer--and Mickey never considered that as work, but as recreation
pure and simple. It was into this haven that Tom was born; there he grew
up, alternating between the chronic high spirits of his father and the
chronic low ones of his mother, and being, on the whole, healthy and
well-fed and contented.
He had entered the service of the road while yet a mere boy, preferring
to go to work rather than to school, which was the only alternative
offered him; and he soon became an expert lineman, running up and down
the poles as agile as a monkey and dancing out along the wires in a way
that earned him more than one thrashing from his boss. Advancing years
had tempered this foolhardiness, but had only served to accentuate the
eccentric side of his character. He would be, one day, buoyant as a lark
and obliging to an almost preposterous degree, and the next day, ready to
snap off the head of anybody who addressed him, and barely civil to his
superior officers.
These vagaries got him into hot water sometimes; and more than once
he was "on the carpet" before the superintendent; but the greatest
punishment ever meted out to him was a short vacation without pay. The
road really could not afford to do without him, for Tom Mickey was the
best lineman in the middle west. The tangle of wires which were an
integral part of the system was to him an open book, to be read at a
glance. Was any wire in trouble, he would mount his tricycle, a sort of
miniature hand-car, spin out along the track, and in a surprisingly short
time the trouble was remedied and the wire in working order. Tom was a
jewel--in the rough, it is true, and not without a flaw--but a jewel just
the same.
Luckily he was in one of his buoyant moods when Jim Anderson approached
him on the morning following his conversation with Allan. Perhaps it is
only right to say that this was not wholly luck, for Jim had reconnoitred
thoroughly beforehand, and had not ventured to approach the lineman
until assured by one of his helpers that he was in a genial humour.
Mickey was just loading up his tricycle with wire and insulators,
preparatory to a trip out along the line, when Jim accosted him.
"Mr. Mickey," he began, "another fellow named Allan West and myself
want to rig up a little telegraph line from my house, out near the two
bridges, to his, just back of the yards here, and we were wondering if
you would let us string our wire on the company's poles. There seem to be
some vacant places, and of course we'd be mighty careful not to interfere
with the other wires."
He stopped, eying Mickey anxiously, but that worthy went on with his
work as though he had not heard. He was puffing vigorously at a short
clay pipe, and with a certain viciousness that made Jim wonder if he had
approached him at the wrong moment, after all.
"What 'd ye say th' other kid's name is?" Mickey asked, after what seemed
an age to the waiting boy.
"Allan West."
"Is that th' kid that Jack Welsh took t' raise?"
"Yes; he lives with the Welshes. He worked in Welsh's section-gang last
year--took Dan Nolan's place, you know."
"Yes--I moind," said Mickey, and went on smoking.
"How does it happen," he demanded at last, "that he wants t' learn t' be
a operator?"
"He's got a job in th' trainmaster's office," Jim explained. "He wants to
learn the business."
Mickey nodded, and knocking out his pipe against his boot-heel,
deliberately filled it again, lighted it, and turned back to his work.
Finally the tricycle was loaded and he pushed it out on the main line,
ready for his trip. Jim followed him anxiously. He watched Mickey take
his seat on the queer-looking machine, spit on his hands and grasp the
lever; then he turned away disappointed. That line was not going to be
possible, after all.
"Wait a minute," called Mickey. "What th' blazes are ye in such a hurry
about? Do ye see that wire up there--th' outside wire on th' lowest
cross-arm?"
"Yes," nodded Jim, following the direction of the pointed finger.
"Well, that's a dead one. We don't use it no more, an' I'm a-goin' t'
take it down afore long. Ye kin use it, if ye want to, till then--mebbe
it'll be a month 'r two afore I git around to it."
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Mickey," cried Jim, his face beaming. "That will be
fine. We're a thousand times obliged--"
But the lineman cut him short with a curt nod, bent to the lever, and
rattled away over the switches, out of the yards.
Jim hurried on to his place in the long-shop, getting there just as the
whistle blew, and went about his accustomed work, but he kept an eye out
for Allan, who, he knew, would be coming through before long in search of
the master-mechanic. Allan, you may be sure, did not neglect the chance
to say good-morning to his new friend, and listened with sparkling eyes
while Jim poured out the story of his success with Mickey.
"And now," he concluded, "all we'll have to do is to run a wire into our
house from the pole just in front of it, and then run another across the
yards here to your house. We can do it in a couple of evenings."
"And we'll have it for a month, anyway," added Allan.
"A month! We'll have it as long as we want it. That was just Mickey's
way. He didn't want to seem to be too tender-hearted. He'll never touch
the wire as long as we're using it. I'll get some old wire to make the
connections with, and fix up the batteries."
"All right," agreed Allan, and went on his way.
The work of stringing the wires was begun that very evening; the
batteries were overhauled and filled with dilute sulphuric acid, and
the keys and sounders were tested and found to be in good shape. Three
evenings later, one of the instruments was clicking on the table in
Allan's room, and Jim was bending over the other one in his room a mile
away. Only, alas, the clicks were wild and irregular and without meaning.
But that did not last long. The book on telegraphy helped them; Allan
himself, in the dispatchers' office, had ample opportunity to observe how
the system worked, and each of the boys copied out the Morse alphabet and
set himself to learn it, practising on his key at every spare moment.
They found that telegraphic messages are transmitted by the use of three
independent characters: short signals, or dots; long signals, or dashes;
and dividing intervals or spaces between adjacent signals. Thus, a dot
followed by a dash represents the letter a; a dash followed by three
dots represents the letter b, while two dots, space, dot, represents the
letter c, and so through the alphabet, which, according to the Morse
code, is written like this: a, .-; b, -...; c, .. .; d, -..; e, .; and so
on. Longer spaces or pauses divide the words, and longer dashes are also
used in representing some of the letters.
The dots and dashes are made by means of a key which opens and closes the
electric circuit, and causes the sounders of all the other instruments
connected with the wire to vibrate responsively. When an operator desires
to send the letter a, he depresses his key for a short interval, then
releases it, and, after an interval equally brief, depresses it again,
holding it down three times as long before releasing it. All the other
sounders repeat this dot and dash, and the listening operators recognize
the letter a. Every word must be spelled out in this manner, letter by
letter.
As may well be believed, the boys found the sending and receiving of
even the shortest words difficult and painful enough at first, but
in a surprisingly short time certain combinations of sounds began to
stand out, as it were, among their surroundings. The two combinations
which first became familiar were - .... . and .- -. -.., representing
respectively "the" and "and." Following this, came the curious
combination of sounds, ..--.., which represents the period, one of the
most difficult the learner has to master. Other combinations followed,
until most of the shorter words began to assume the same individuality
when heard over the wire that they have when seen by the eye. It was no
longer necessary to listen to them letter by letter; the ear grasped them
as a whole, just as the eye grasps the written word without separating it
into the letters which compose it.
But even then, Allan still found the clicking of the instruments in
the office an unsolvable riddle. This was due largely to the system
of abbreviation which railroad operators use, a sort of telegraphic
shorthand incomprehensible to the ordinary operator; but the sending
was in most cases so rapid that even if the words had been spelled out
in full the boy would have had great difficulty in following them.
Train-dispatchers, it may be said in passing, have no time to waste;
their messages are terse and to the point, and are sent like a flash. And
woe to the operator who has to break in with the . .. . .. which
means "repeat!" The dispatchers themselves, of course, are capable of
taking the hottest ball or the wildest that ever came over the wires.
Indeed, most of them can and do work the key with one hand while they
eat their lunch with the other; and the call or signal for his office
will instantly awaken him from a sleep which a cannon-shot would not
disturb. Telegraphy, in a word, develops a sort of sixth sense, and the
experienced operator receives or sends a message as readily as he talks
or reads or writes. It is second nature.
It was about this time that one of the old dispatchers resigned to seek
his fortune in the West, and a new one made his début in a manner that
Allan did not soon forget. He was a slender young fellow, with curly
blond hair, and he came on duty at three o'clock in the afternoon, just
when the rush of business is heaviest. The induction of a new dispatcher
is something of a ceremony, for the welfare of the road rests in his
hands for eight hours of every day, and everybody about the offices is
always anxious to see just what stuff the newcomer is made of. So on this
occasion, most of the division officials managed to have some business in
the dispatchers' office at the moment the new man came on.
He glanced over the train-sheet, while the man he was relieving
explained to him briefly the position of trains and what orders were
outstanding. His sounder began to click an instant later, and he leaned
over, opened his key, and gave the signal, .. .., which showed that he
was ready to receive the message. Then, as the message started in a
sputter which evidenced the excited haste of the man who was sending it,
he turned away, took off his coat, and hung it up, deliberately removed
his cuffs, and lighted a cigar. Then he sat down at his desk, and picked
up a pen. Something very like a sigh of relief ran around the office.
But the pen did not suit him. He tried it, made a wry face, and looked
inquiringly at the other dispatcher.
"The pens are over yonder in that drawer," said that worthy, with assumed
indifference, and went on sending a message he had just started.
The newcomer arose, went to the drawer, opened it, and selected a pen
with leisurely care. Allan watched him, his heart in his mouth. He could
see that the chief-dispatcher was frowning and that the trainmaster
looked very stern. He knew that neither of these officials would tolerate
any "fooling," when the welfare of the road was in question. But at last
the newcomer was in his seat again. He reached forward and opened his
key, and every one waited for the . .. . .., which would ask that
the message, a long and involved one, be repeated. But instead, a curt
"Cut it short," flew over the line, followed by an order so terse, so
admirable, so clean-cut, that the trainmaster turned away with a sudden
relaxation of countenance.
"He'll do," he murmured, as he got out a match and lighted his forgotten
cigar. "He'll do."
And, indeed, at a later day, Allan saw the same dispatcher receive and
answer two messages simultaneously. But these were merely the trimmings
of the profession. They savoured of sleight of hand, and had little to do
with the real business of train-dispatching.
So Allan did not despair. Every evening, he and Jim laboured at their
keys. First, Allan would send an item, perhaps, from the evening paper,
and Jim would receive it. Then he would send it back, and Allan would
write it out, as his sounder clicked along, and compare his copy with the
original, to detect any errors. At first, errors were the rule; but as
time went on, they became more and more infrequent; and at the end of two
months, both the boys had acquired a very fair facility in sending and
receiving. Indeed, one evening, after an unusually satisfactory bout, Jim
was moved to a little self-approval.
"I think we're both pretty good," he clicked out. "Let's apply for a job
as operator."
"Not yet," Allan answered. "This line hasn't done all it can for us yet."
Nor for the road, he might have added, could he have foreseen the events
of the next twenty-four hours.