Telegraphic Train Orders

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

My Norfolk and Western RAILROAD, Aug 1888 (the end of the line is Duhring on the Flat Top Division, now on the old Bluestone Branch), Employees System Timetable has a section titled "Rules for the movement of Trains by Telegraphic Orders" It explains the system and gives several pages of examples of forms and how orders should be written for certain circumstances.  Also has all the signal rules, lantern, arm and whistle, etc.  It even has a section to be filled out by the watchmaker, certifying that your watch has been inspected and considered reliable and able to maintain no more than a 30 second varience per week.

Rodney Byrd

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Sent: Saturday, September 16, 2006 7:53:47 PM
Subject: NW-Mailing-List Digest, Vol 8, Issue 32


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Today's Topics:

   1. RE: N&W Train Order Signals - "Calling On"
      (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)
   2. Shopping List of N&W Information (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)
   3. Re: The Big White Rectangle (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)
   4. Re: The Big White Rectangle (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)
   5. Re: N&W Train Order Signals (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)
   6. RE: N&W Train Order Signals - "Calling On"
      (nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org)


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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 20:45:45 +0000
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: RE: N&W Train Order Signals - "Calling On"
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org (  N&W Mailing List), 
Message-ID:
    <091620062045.20199.450C6279000938AE00004EE722064244130E02900E049C01900E9D9F at comcast.net>
    
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

To my previous post dealing with "Calling On Signals," I should have included the 1905 rule on "permissive signals," which seems to pre-date the concept of "interlocking."

It is Rule 712, and is included under that section of the Rule Book captioned "Rules Governing the Operation of Telegraphic Block."  By the fact of its inclusion in a section so named, it is apparent that the concept of "interlocking" had not yet matured in the minds of the framers of the N&W book... if, indeed, they had any interlockings at all !

Rule 712 states (and here I have preserved the original capitalizations in the text):

"A permissive block arm, painted GREEN, is placed on the signal mast below the block arm at stations named by special instructions, where it is desired to move trains under permissive block without the use of PERMISSIVE BLOCK CARD.  

"A horizontal position of the permissive arm or a green light displayed signifies caution, and indicates that a preceding train is in the block.

"When it is desired to allow a train to enter a block under permissive signal, the block arm will be lowered when the train approaches, and the GREEN arm will remain in horizontal position.

"When the block is clear, both the block and the GREEN arm will be lowered as the train approaches.

"When a block is controlled by a permissive block arm, freight trains may be permitted to enter same, five minutes apart.

"No train will be permitted to enter such block while there is a passenger train therein, and no passenger train will be permitted to enter such block while there is any train therein, except as provided in Rule 705."  <Rule 705 simply states that the train dispatcher will issue Permissive Block Cards, so it appears that passenger trains could be operated under a permissive block so long as the train dispatcher issued a permissive block card.>

At any rate, the "green permissive arm" mentioned in Rule 712 of the 1905 Rule Book does not seem to be aimed at a situation where "Calling On" signals are used at interlockings, but rather at certain "telegraph block stations" which, due to traffic, frequently had to advance trains under permissive block indications.  As worded, the1905 rule seems to apply more fittingly to simple telegraph block stations than to interlocking situations.  The green permissive arm allowed the operator to do his work from inside the station (where he may have to stay close to the telegraph sounder,) rather than go outside and hand up permissive cards.  But, now 101 years after the fact, who really knows the exact situation(s) the rule was addressing, and how it was applied...?

One other thing about the 1905 rule cries out for comment, and that is the old principle that "the engineman must see the signal changed to a proceed indication."  Many railroads had that rule.  It was a guard against telegraphers and levermen falling off to sleep and failing to restore a signal to Stop behind a passing train, with the unseemly consequences that a following train may soon come along and accept the signal which had been displyed for the previous train.  When one realizes that there was no "Hours of Service Law" in 1905, and that the regular tour of duty for telegraphers and levermen was twelve hours per day, six or seven days per week, he can better understand why that particular rule is in the book !

Also, the fact that the block arm and the permissive arm are "lowered" indicates that the N&W was using lower quadrant semaphores.  All as one would expect, given that the year was 1905.

Give me a one-way ticket on a time machine !

-- abram burnett
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 21:47:48 +0000
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Shopping List of N&W Information
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org (  N&W Mailing List)
Message-ID:
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Here are some things we need to establish:

1.  When/where was the electric track circuit first used on the N&W?

2.  When/where was the first installation of an Automatic Block Signal System on the N&W?  When/where were "coded track circuits" first used on the N&W (it was sometime in the 1930s on the Norfolk Division.)  We could also use a chronology covering all installations of Automatic Block Signaling on the N&W.

3.  When/where was the first interlocking installed on the N&W?

4.  We need a complete list of all "interlocking stations" (i.e. towers or cabins that controlled interlockings) on the N&W.

5.  When/where was the first remotely controlled interlocking installed on the N&W?  (I think it was at "NR" North Roanoke, in the early 1920s, remotely controlled from "UD," the Shenandoah Div train dispatching office in the old Park Street building.)

6.  When/where was the first use of a pneumatic switch mechanism on the N&W?

7.  When/where was the fist "all electric" (or "all electro-pneumatic") interlocking constructed on the N&W?

8.  When/where was the last purely mechanical interlocking retired on the N&W?

9.  We need a chronology for the installation of CTC on the N&W.

10.  We also need a chronology covering the installation of double track on the various Divisions.

11.  And finally, we need to spike down the dates for the establishment and dissolution-or-merging of the various operating Divisions (such as the "Central Division" and the "V&T Division," etc.)

Some of these questions are probably answered in the old N&W annual reports.

<< PS to Ken Miller...  I shall expect to have your detailed report, answering all particulars indicated above, by the end of the present month.  -- /s/ R.H. Smith >>

-- abram burnett  :)
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Message: 3
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 09:38:04 -0400
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Re: The Big White Rectangle
To: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Message-ID: <001d01c6d995$6124bd30$6500a8c0 at jim>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
    reply-type=response

David,

At a Prototype Modelers clinic, Al Westerfield was giving a presentation on 
USRA Single Sheathed boxcars and he had a photo of an N&W boxcar with the 
white rectangle.  Someone asked what it signified and Al said it was his 
opinion it was used to designate cars that had been equipped with air 
brakes.  His reasoning was that there were many rail workers who could not 
read; thus, instead of the railway having to rely on someone being able to 
read stenciling that said "Air Brake Equipped" they put the white rectangle 
on the car.

A couple of years ago, while working at the archives, I came across a 
stenciling diagram of an early gondola with the white rectangle; the 
notation was that it was to be applied on cars equipped with air brakes.  I 
made a copy of the diagram and gave it to Westerfield.  As I recall, the 
diagram also contained stenciling for "Air Brake Equipped" but I didn't keep 
a copy of it for myself.

Al's suggestion that it was done for illiterate trainmen is plausible; of 
course, it might have also been done to more easily classify cars with or 
without air brakes.  I don't know how cars with and without air brakes in 
the same train were handled.

So, I think the diagram certainly suggests the cars with the white rectangle 
had air brakes.  The reasoning for this stenciling indication is still a bit 
cloudy.  Hopefully, the answer lies within the archives in the stenciling 
revision books or other documentation.

Jim Brewer

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: "'NW Mailing List'" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 9:28 PM
Subject: The Big White Rectangle



> For about the first 20 years of the last century (and a bit before that) 

> N&W freight cars had a large white rectangle painted on them. The cars 

> delivered in 1893 didn't have the rectangle but the steel frame HD hopper 

> of 1896 did. The secondhand box cars N&W bought in 1895 may or may not 

> have had it. The last car to have it was the prototype GS battleship gon 

> built in September 1920, as the production GS gons did not have it.

>

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/F1/NS3519.JPG

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/glass_plates/screen/03GP0510.jpg

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/glass_plates/screen/03GP0528.jpg

>

> Why did N&W put that rectangle on every car it would fit on (box, stock, 

> hopper, and gon, but not flats)?

>

> David Thompson

>

> ________________________________________

> NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org

> To change your subscription go to

> http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list

> 





------------------------------

Message: 4
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:58:01 -0400
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Re: The Big White Rectangle
To: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Message-ID: <000801c6d9d2$cc5bb6c0$6401a8c0 at LARRYS>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
    reply-type=response

David
    The big white rectangle painted on the car side was to identify that the 
car had air brakes

Larry Evans
Kenova WV
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: "'NW Mailing List'" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 9:28 PM
Subject: The Big White Rectangle



> For about the first 20 years of the last century (and a bit before that) 

> N&W freight cars had a large white rectangle painted on them. The cars 

> delivered in 1893 didn't have the rectangle but the steel frame HD hopper 

> of 1896 did. The secondhand box cars N&W bought in 1895 may or may not 

> have had it. The last car to have it was the prototype GS battleship gon 

> built in September 1920, as the production GS gons did not have it.

>

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/F1/NS3519.JPG

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/glass_plates/screen/03GP0510.jpg

> http://spec.lib.vt.edu/imagebase/norfolksouthern/glass_plates/screen/03GP0528.jpg

>

> Why did N&W put that rectangle on every car it would fit on (box, stock, 

> hopper, and gon, but not flats)?

>

> David Thompson

>

> ________________________________________

> NW-Mailing-List at nwhs.org

> To change your subscription go to

> http://list.nwhs.org/mailman/options/nw-mailing-list

> 




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Message: 5
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 17:08:55 EDT
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Re: N&W Train Order Signals
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Message-ID: <c62.164b57f.323dc1e7 at aol.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Don:
A "call-on" signal means talk tummy (talk to me).  Before  radio,  it was
possible for a dispatcher to convene a telephone conversation with a train  
crew
by flipping the "CO" button on a traffic control machine.  At the  selected 
signal
bungalow, a white light would illuminate and that was the signal for the  
nearby
train crew to pick up the phone.  My portion of the Radford   Division TC 
machine
has been modified many times.  The levers to activate the  "call-on" signals
are marked "Call on"  - "CO' , and "DLCO' and they're located at each  power
operated crossover.

In ABS territory, it's different.   The dispatcher communicates  via 
operators.  A
train approaching a STOP signal might well find a "call-on" indication  
displayed.  
It means don't just sit there,  the operator needs to talk to  you.

Yes, Gary, the "31" order does restrict the rights of a superior trains,  but 
the
conductor did not always stop and sign it on the old NS.  In many  instances,
the dispatcher would authorize the operator to sign the conductor's name  and
hand the order up on the fly.  It worked pretty good . . . . .most of  the 
time.

                                                         Harry Bundy

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Message: 6
Date: Sat, 16 Sep 2006 21:21:02 +0000
From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: RE: N&W Train Order Signals - "Calling On"
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org (  N&W Mailing List)
Message-ID:
    <091620062121.3655.450C6ABE0006B6EA00000E4722007507440E02900E049C01900E9D9F at comcast.net>
    
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

I just checked some old editions of "The Standard Code of The American Railway Association - Train Rules" and found that the Train Rules Committee of the A.R.A. did not include anything about "interlockings" in the Standard Code until October 6, 1897.

This despite the fact that the first interlocking of switches and signals was installed in 1859 in England; that the great John Saxby patented the rudiments of interlocking in England in 1856; that Ashbel Welch of the United New Jersey Canal & Railroad Companies installed the first interlocking in this country (British made) at Trenton, NJ in 1870; that the first interlocking built in this country was installed in 1874 at Spuyten Duyvil, NY; and that the 1876 Centennial Exhibition contained a large exhibition of railroad interlocking appliances.  All of these, of course, were purely mechanical and had no electrical adjuncts.

We could probably conclude that it took 20 years for the concept and hardware of "interlocking" to be refined, improved, standardized and adopted by a sufficient number of railroads in this country, so that the Train Rules Committee found it was time to include interlocking practices in the Standard Code.

Which, for us on this List, raises the question of where and when the N&W became involved in this stream of events.

-- abram burnett
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