Railroad Gazette/Volume 38/Number 5/Charles Minot’s Rules
Charles Minot’s Rules.
BY G. F. R.
The train rules of the New York & Erie Railroad, issued on March 6th, 1854, may perhaps be of interest to the younger generation of the readers of the Railroad Gazette. They will be struck by the similarity between them and what many of us have come to regard as the outgrowth of the superior wisdom of our own time. For example:
Rule 1: “Each person in the employ of the Company is to devote himself exclusively to its service, attending during the prescribed hours of the day or night, and residing wherever he may be required.”
Rule 4: “Unless appointed so to do, he is not on any occasion, or under any pretence whatever, to receive money from any person on the Company’s account.”
Rule 5: “No one, whatever may be his rank, will be allowed to absent himself from his duty, without the permission of the head of the Department in which he may be employed.”
Similar rules, in substantially the same words, will be found on many roads to-day. Next follows a rule regarding deportment of employees and their treatment of the company’s patrons. After this comes the well-known rule, still in use, directing employees when in doubt to take the safe course; another enjoining care in the use of the company’s property, etc., all of which have a very familiar sound.
On signals, the rules prescribe the same use of red and green, and torpedoes, that is so familiar to-day. This is also true of the whistle signals, even to four blasts to call in the flagman; five blasts, however, was the signal for “wooding up” in those days; and red flags and lights were carried on the front of the engine instead of green, to denote a following section. [This practice may be found to-day.—Editor].
Many of the rules will compare favorably with the modern rules of the American Railway Association. There is one prescribing the manner in which detached portions of a train must be handled in case of breaking in two; another depriving a train of all rights when twenty-four hours or more behind time; another prescribing the method of moving a train which has been held by another between telegraph stations; another explaining that full-face figures on time tables indicate meeting or passing points.
Section 4 relates to the duties of conductors. One of these rules sounds a little peculiar at this date:
“When there are any horses on a train, unless the owner has sent a person in charge of them, he will see that they are carefully watered and moderately fed on the road, and such expense shall be paid him by the Agent at the end of his stage.”
A rule to-day requiring the conductor to furnish any part of the capital necessary to the conduct of the business of a railroad would probably precipitate a visit from the Grievance Committee.
The fifth section relates to the duties of enginemen. Care is enjoined in starting and in stopping; or, as it is termed in the somewhat quaint language of the time, “bringing up the train.” There is one rule, however, which we may well suppose was not in all cases strictly adhered to. It reads:
“The trainmen are required to stop the train when occasion requires without allowing it to press upon the tender; and the engineer is required to stop the engine and tender without allowing them to draw upon the train.”
Certainly a very nice operation, and an ideal manner of handling a train.
The sixth and seventh sections relate to the duties of station agents, baggagemen, and miscellaneous employees. Only eighty pounds of baggage was carried free in those days. A corpse was transported for two first-class fares.
The ninth section contains a rule which, while still with us in spirit, has been shorn of the breezy and refreshing language of 1854. It reads:
“Employees of the Company disapproving of these or other regulations of the road, or not disposed to aid in carrying them out, are requested not to remain in the employ of the Company.”
The remainder of the book consists of instructions relating to passes, list of officers of the road, table of distances, and a speed table. The whole is issued under the authority of Charles Minot, Superintendent.
The book contains several references to double track, and it is plain that the telegraph was used in connection with train movement, and also for the transmission of standard time daily at noon, precisely as at present, and yet there is one rule which indicates that so simple a thing as a ticket punch had not yet been brought into use. This is a rule relating to the handling of passes by conductors, and required a corner to be torn off to show that the pass had been used—each division of the road being indicated by a certain corner of the pass, prescribed in the rule.
No doubt many readers of the Railroad Gazette are familiar with the name of Charles Minot, and know the valuable service he rendered to railroads as a pioneer in the profession. He is credited with being the first to make use of the telegraph to control the movements of trains, and it may be worth while to repeat the somewhat familiar story:
“In 1850 the Erie Road was in operation between Piermont and Elmira. The track was a single one, such a thing as a double track being then unknown in the country. Two years before, after much discussion and opposition, a telegraph wire had been put up along the line. Superintendent Minot, who was a man a long way in advance of the times, was a strong believer in the practicability of the telegraph as a facilitator of transportation on railroads. In the summer of 1850 he was a passenger one day on a westbound train over his road. The train he was on, according to the printed time-table, was to meet a through train from the west at Turner’s Station, 47 miles from New York. When Mr. Minot’s train reached Turner’s, he learned that the eastbound train was six hours late, owing to some mishap. Under the system of railroading then governing employees, the westbound train had to remain at Turner’s until the delayed train passed that station. In fact, the whole business of the road from there west was at a standstill owing to the non-arrival of the train at the different stations where other trains were awaiting it. Superintendent Minot saw at once how ridiculous such a system was. There was a telegraph office at Turner’s, and it was then the only one between that station and Jersey City. The Superintendent went to the office and made the operator’s hair stand by sending a message to the station agent at Port Jervis that he intended to run the train he was on from Turner’s to Port Jervis on the time of the belated eastbound train. He ordered the agent not to let any train leave that station going east until the train he was on arrived there. He also ordered the agent to telegraph to him how he understood the message. The answer was satisfactory, and the Superintendent went to the conductor of the train and told him to start on with his train. The conductor refused to do so, and the Superintendent discharged him on the spot. Minot then ordered the engineer to pull out. The engineer said he would not take the risk, and in the argument that followed, the Superintendent dragged the engineer from the cab, gave him an elegant dressing-out, and mounted the footboard himself. He ran the train to Port Jervis, and sent it on west as far as Narrowsburg before it met the late train, thus saving the passengers five hours, and settling forever the question of the accuracy of the telegraph in running railroad trains.”
While this is being written, a friend to whom the above was shown, together with the old book of rules, confirms the story of the first train order, and tells me that his father was the telegraph operator upon whose hair Mr. Minot’s telegram is said to have had such a very peculiar effect; but he calls attention to the need of allowing a grain or two of salt in reading about the alleged harsh treatment of the objecting conductor and engineer.
In the statement quoted it is said that such a thing as double track was unknown in 1850; but the book of instructions, published four years later, prescribes rules for the movement of trains over double track, showing that progress had been made in that time.