Letters from an old railway official/Letter 5
LETTER V.
SAFETY OF TRAINS IN YARDS.
My Dear Boy:—I have yours saying that my letter on yard work omits mention of the most important feature, the safety of trains in yards; that the letter is much like a cup of lunch-counter coffee—very good, what there is of it, and plenty of it, such as it is.
I admit that you have caught me not only foul of the main, but outside the switches. I appreciate your consideration in so politely pulling the whistle cord for me, when you would have been justified in setting the air. We all like to be with good company and pull the president’s special, and in this case I seem to have with me no less distinguished companions than the American Railway Association. That able body has been detoured too long around this important matter of rules governing trains in yards. Before I leave their varnished cars and climb into the gangway of a switch engine to run into the yards, I want the conductor to throw off a register slip setting forth my admiration for the great work already done by that brainy organization. I take off my hat to the American Railway Association. When I take off said hat, especially to a lady, I always keep both eyes open. Adoration should not be too blind or one may overlook some other meeting points and land clear off the right of way.
Long ago some bright minds, whose identity is lost in the rush of the years, hit upon the happy expedient of dividing trains into two kinds, regular and extra; just as early theology divided mankind into the two convenient classes of saints and sinners. This designation of trains, doubtless like all innovations opposed at first, soon acquired the sacredness that time brings to all things. At that period when we got a car over the road and into the terminal we felt that its troubles were about ended, as did the contemporary novelist whose terminal was always a betrothal scene. Under modern conditions a car reaching a terminal, like a couple leaving the altar, finds that its problems have only fairly begun. Less romance, more progress.
Did you ever try to explain to an intelligent traveling man just what a train is? Did he not ask you some questions that kept you guessing for a week? Did he not remind you that outsiders usually make the inventions that revolutionize operation? Radical changes in methods of warfare are seldom necessitated by the inventions of military men. A druggist invented the automatic coupler. Railroad men did not patent the air brake or devise the sleeping car. All this is natural, because in any profession where one attains excellence in a given method his mental vision may become contracted; he may reason in a circle.
Every once in a while we are appalled by a terrible collision in a terminal, the result perhaps of some poor devil of an employe not appreciating fully the meaning of “all trains.” To the innocent bystander the switch engine and cars are just as much a train as the Pullman flyer with its two little green markers on the last car. After such accidents, for a brief period, we hear a great deal about act of Providence, presumptuousness of man, fallibility of the human mind, surprise checking, discipline of employes, company spirit, governmental supervision and a lot of other more or less unrelated subjects. Are we not to blame for not having met the issue squarely? Is it not time that we legislated to recognize the scores of engines chasing through our terminals, from freighthouse to yard, from engine house to station? Are they outcasts? Do the millions of dollars of investment they represent come through a different treasury?
To the human mind an engine or a motor is a train, while a cut of cars without motive power is only a piece of a train, and goes to the brain as an idea of something incomplete. All the artificial definitions of the standard code cannot alter this state of facts. What do you think of the following proposed designations and tentative definitions?
Train.—An engine (or motor) in service, with or without cars. Two or more engines (or motors) may be combined as one train.
Regular Train.—A train represented on the time table. It may consist of sections. A section derives its running existence from a train order requiring a regular train or the proper section thereof, to display prescribed signals.
Extra Train.—A train not represented on the time table, but deriving its running existence from train order.
Yard Train.—A train neither represented on the time table nor created by train order, but deriving its running existence from rules governing movements within prescribed limits.
You will find if you work these definitions through the standard code the changes will be slight, but the results comprehensive and satisfactory. This will do as a starter, but you will live to see trains handled on single track without train orders as we now understand the term.
If this answers your signal, suppose we call in that flag we whistled out when we stopped to talk it over.