[B] He is Superintendent of the Voluntary Relief Department of the Pennsylvania and allied roads, with office at Trenton, N. J.
B. B. A., Jr.
[PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.]
The views on train dispatching here offered have been arrived at during an experience of some twenty years, including a recent connection with the preparation of a set of rules for the company on whose road the writer is employed. While his agency in the formation of the rules referred to accounts for the existence of a general similarity and no radical difference between them and the present treatment of the subject, the latter is not to be taken as an authorized commentary upon those rules, but as an expression of individual views for which, with any additional matter or variations in arrangement, the writer is alone responsible.
With his first experiments in train dispatching the writer became convinced that the method of issuing train orders in the same words to all concerned in each transaction afforded greater security than that supplied by any other form of order. Another early conviction was that each step in the process of preparing and issuing train orders should be carefully and minutely arranged for by specific rules.
In here undertaking to impress these views, it is also sought to set forth the general principles upon which rules should be based, and to recommend methods of procedure for all ordinary practice. The methods proposed have been tested by the writer, and the most of them by others. If they are not found to apply to all existing circumstances, they may at least serve as guides in devising other plans.
It is not assumed that this consideration of the subject of train dispatching is exhaustive. The theme is a fruitful one and of growing interest and importance. Much remains to be said of what has already been accomplished, and the future will doubtless show advances in this science far beyond the best practice of the present.
1883.