Under the common practice there must be prepared at least three copies of each train order received for delivery. The conductor and engineman are each supplied with a copy, and the operator retains one. To make three several copies by pen and ink, as heretofore practiced by some, takes a good deal of time, and there is danger that they may not be all alike, and the time and risk are increased if more than three copies are required. To obviate this, the manifold system of writing has come into general use and with very great advantage. As used by many, however, it has serious defects. The tissue paper frequently used is very objectionable, especially the yellow variety. Messages written on it are quite difficult to read, especially in a poor light; it is easily crumpled, rendering it still more indistinct; it is difficult to handle in the wind, and it is easily damaged by wet. In the use of the manifold for some seventeen years the author found it entirely practicable to use an opaque white paper, of sufficient body to be free from the above objections and yet capable of giving seven distinct copies with a good pencil of the hardness of No. 4 Faber. This is now recognized as the best and is prescribed in the specifications connected with the Time Convention rules.
Operators should not be permitted to receive orders on separate slips and copy them on the manifold, but should take the order down at once in the manifold-book. A sheet of tin placed in the book enables them to make all the copies perfectly distinct. Of course none but "sound" operators can do this. It takes but little more time and application to make a "sound" than a "paper" operator, and the advantage of the former is so great in this as well as in other respects in this service that it should always be required. Operators readily become able to take the requisite number of copies in manifold without the use of intermediate slips, and the risks of copying are thus avoided. When more copies are wanted than are made at the first writing they should be traced from one of the original copies. In the case of a general order, as in annulling a train, operators would usually make but one copy, and others required for delivery should be traced from this. Careful supervision should be had as to the actual practice of operators in the proper use of the manifold, and as to frequently changing the carbon paper to secure distinctness.
THE RECORD.
A careful record ought to be kept of each step in the issuing of an order, as well as of its exact terms. This record should be made on the original copies held by the Dispatcher, and by the operator who receives and delivers the order. The Dispatcher's copy should show who issued it, and both should indicate what operators were engaged in its transmission, and the time at which each step was taken, as well as the proper address, etc.
The Dispatcher's train sheet should constantly show the movements of the several trains, which should be promptly reported by the operators and recorded by them in the prescribed forms. A practical difficulty occurs in making the Dispatcher's record of all the steps in the issuing of an order, which it may be well to refer to here. When the Dispatcher is assisted by an operator, the most of the steps will be taken and recorded by the latter. They should be at once recorded on the original copy of the order, so as to leave nothing to be remembered or copied. Now, if the Dispatcher must write the order out in the book before transmission, the operator may have occasion to use the book at the same time for recording steps then in progress with reference to other orders; and if he does not, the passing of the books back and forth between them is inconvenient. It has, partly on this account, doubtless, become the custom with many for the Dispatcher himself to telegraph the orders without first writing them down, his operator taking them down as repeated back and writing them in the book of record. The operator thus has the book all the time in his hands. The objections to the Dispatcher transmitting orders himself are elsewhere considered, and it is designed here to point out a method by which the other plan can be pursued and the inconvenience referred to avoided. The Dispatcher is provided with a manifold-book and some loose sheets properly headed. With these, by the manifold process, he prepares two copies of the order, one in his book and the other on a loose sheet which he hands to the operator for use in transmitting. On this all the subsequent record is made by the operator, and at the close of each day all the orders for that day are fastened together and filed away. The numbers and manifold writing sufficiently identify the two copies if subsequent comparison is necessary, each being in fact an original. This method has the further advantage that the Dispatcher has by him all the time copies of orders he has issued, for reference if needed.