“Thank you,” bowed Ralph modestly.
“It’s a hummer, without a doubt. To prevent the lives of the Congressional Committee being placed in peril, though, I think you had better make another.”
“Think so?” questioned Ralph blankly.
“You see,” went on the operator solemnly, “you have only allowed seven minutes between Lisle and Hull, while the time card shows the distance to be six miles. Dan Lacey and his engine 86 are capable of great bursts of speed, but they can’t fly. Then there’s the through. She’s an hour late from the south today. What are you going to do about her. Pass them on one track, I suppose?”
“He’s guying you, Fairbanks,” spoke a gruff but pleased voice at Ralph’s shoulder. “Lacey can make the spurt without a quiver, and as you probably noticed the late through is cancelled for transfer at Blakeville. You’ll do.”
Ralph picked up a good deal of general information that day. He perfected himself in the double-order system. This covered the giving of an order to all trains concerned at the same time. A case came up where the dispatcher desired to make a meeting point for two trains. The order was sent simultaneously to both of them. Ralph had a case in point where a train was leaving his end of the division and wherein it was necessary to make a meeting point with a train coming in. Before giving his order to his conductor and engineer he telegraphed to a station at which the incoming train would soon arrive. From there the operator repeated the message back word for word, giving a signal that his red board was turned. By this means both trains received the same order and there would be no doubt about the point at which they were to meet.
Time orders, slow orders, extra orders, annulment orders, clearance orders--Ralph found that any one gifted with a reasonable amount of common sense and having practical knowledge of the rudiments of mathematics could do the work successfully. Beneath all the simplicity of the system, however, the young railroader realized that there ran a deep undercurrent of complications that only long time and a cool head could master.
All of a sudden sometimes some train out on the road that had been running all right would bob up with a hot box or a broken draw head, and then all the calculations for a new train would be knocked awry.
About four o’clock in the afternoon the superintendent came into the office and made a gesture towards Ralph which the latter understood perfectly. He nudged Glidden as he passed him, who blinked up at him intelligently. Then Ralph went home.
It was just after dusk that the young dispatcher left the cottage. It had set in a cold tempestuous night with blinding snow eddies, and Ralph wore a protecting storm coat, and carried a good lunch in one of its capacious pockets.