“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.