Confessions of a Railroad Signalman

by James O. Fagan

Of course, one of my first thoughts in regard to the non-observance of rules related to the lack of adequate supervision by the management. To me it seemed to be a remarkable fact that I could easily follow up the working of a rule and the behavior of the men in regard to it, but the management seldom did anything of the kind. In this way my field for investigation became wider and wider, and I quickly arrived at an idea of the seriousness of the situation, from the standpoint of the people who travel from place to place on the cars.

One day a conductor of a freight train came into my office and asked for a train order which, according to the rules, called for the signature of both engineman and conductor. After receiving the order by telegraph from the train dispatcher, I placed it on the desk ready for the signatures. A minute or two later, when I returned from some other work, I saw that the conductor had signed the order for himself and the engineman as well. I said to him, “That will never do. Not so long ago that trick killed three trainmen, wrecked two engines, and cost the company something like $50,000. You must go for your engineman.” “That’s a great note,” the conductor replied. “You mean to say you intend to make me walk half a mile and lose half an hour in order to get that signature; you are the first operator who ever picked me up in this way. Why, they do this thing right along up the road. If the dispatcher was making a meeting point it would be different, but it’s done every day in the case of a work train or a gravel train.” “That may be very true,” I replied, “but you can’t do it here; the engineman himself must sign the order.” Now this man was actually telling the truth, and in a very short time I had the proofs in my possession.

Railroad men who read these lines must remember that in those days I was simply collecting evidence in a fair and honorable way, for my own private purposes, that would enable me to assign some kind of reason or cause for the lamentable loss of life on American railroads. I found the railroad business wherever I went to be bristling with reasons, and the more I looked into the matter the greater became my astonishment.

It cannot be claimed that my illustrations apply to only one or two railroads, for an examination into these accidents, regardless of locality, will reveal the fact that almost without exception they have resulted from the disregard of rules that are practically similar in nature and intent on all railroads.

In those days, and to a great extent at the present time, railroads were equipped with fixed cautionary signals. On approaching such signals it became the duty of the engineman to run slowly and look out. I discovered, in fact it was a matter of common knowledge and remark, that not one man in fifty did anything of the kind, although accidents from the breach of this rule were of daily occurrence, and the lives of thousands of passengers and employees had already paid tribute to this disgraceful state of affairs. To my mind the personal nature of this general inefficiency was its remarkable feature. We railroad men were running the business, and the management and the public got it into their heads, in some way, that we were doing our duty. Unfortunately, with the facts before me, I was unable to console myself with any such delusion. The nature and variety of the incidents I was able to discover were most astonishing. While I certainly dislike to beat the air in this way with illustrations, the matter of our own personal conduct and our direct responsibility for these preventable accidents cannot be sufficiently emphasized. At any rate, the incidents I am describing must be taken as the incentive and inspiration I received for continued exertion.

Furthermore, railroad men are very well aware that my illustrations cannot be looked upon as ancient history. Those on the inside still hear of strange happenings from day to day. I think a chapter on narrow escapes would do us railroad men a power of good. It is surely by taking warning from them that disasters on the rail can be best avoided.

Not so long ago on a Western railroad, and about the same time on a New England railroad as well, passenger trains were run for miles on the wrong track against the traffic. This was done in broad daylight, without orders of any description. The mere possibility of such occurrences, involving trainmen from brakemen to enginemen, is almost unthinkable. With such mental and physical paralysis to guard against, of what avail are block signals or the best intentions of a management? The popular contention that these things occur only “in spots” is most harmful. If only he will do a little thinking, any railroad man in the country can study these so-called “spots” without wandering an inch from his own job. The accidents that are liable to occur when the responsibility can be divided between the rules and the management are as nothing compared to those that we railroad men initiate and blindly invite of our own accord. With all sincerity and candor I present a final illustration, not from the past, but from what is positively taking place at the present day.

As we all know, managers of American railroads have been wrestling with the “hot-box problem” for nearly half a century. The rules relating to the matter are and always have been unmistakable. “Take no chances. If necessary, set off the car.”

On June 17, 1908, a freight train, running fully thirty miles per hour, approached my signal tower with a clear right of way east-bound. At the same time an express passenger train, rushing at full speed west-bound, came in sight. From a distance of nearly half a mile I could see that a car on the freight train was enveloped in smoke and flame from a hot box. As an actual fact, the engineman, conductor, and brakemen were aware of it. A brakeman was on top of the car watching the trouble. But they were nearing the terminal, and on a parallel east-bound track there was a train that all hands were very anxious to pass by or “jump.” So, by common consent, they were taking the chance on the hot box, and the engineer “had her wide open.” As the freight approached the tower I could see the chips flying from the ties, which indicated that the melted journal had snapped in two. A few seconds later both east- and west-bound tracks were blocked with the twisted rails, broken ties, and derailed cars. The passenger train, consisting of sleepers and crowded coaches, escaped dashing into the wreck by a miracle,—that is, by a mere fraction of time.

This is but an incident in the history of taking chances. Concealed in it, however, is a personal lesson that vitally concerns every man in the service. Do we actually insist upon disaster such as threatened this passenger train before we can be persuaded to come to our senses? In this business of taking chances, which covers every branch of railroad service, both the traveling public and the railroad corporations are at our mercy. Through a long course of years, influence and discipline of all kinds have utterly failed to check it. It is useless to talk about “spots,” for most of us take chances systematically. In fact I don’t think the managements have any idea of the nature and extent of this evil, for the reason perhaps that they have made no special study of the subject nor watched for and made note of illustrations, as I have. One would think it would have occurred to some railroad manager to issue a general order, with a caption somewhat as follows: “Here is a list of twenty dangerous chances which some of you are in the habit of taking. For goodness’ sake, have a care!”