Middle Track Operation on the N&W

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Saith Mr. Blevins: "All this talk about the middle tracks is fascinating." 
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The problem we have to avoid in interpreting Middle Tracks is that recent inventions and methods have completely poisoned our perceptions of how things were done in the old days. 

Think of how the problems of the Superiority of Trains were handled in the days before CTC, automatic block, and telephones. When none of these things had yet come into being, it was the day of PURE, unadulterated railroading. The Rule Book told the crews how to clear for superior trains, and there was NO communicating with anybody before it was done. Towermen and Train Dispatchers did not "control" the switches, and there was a day when there were NO wayside telephones for crews to communicate with anyone! The only "communication" possible was when the train was at at open "telegraph office" (N&W parlance.) So crews didn't "call up" before heading into a Middle Track... they just did it, "as per the rules." 

This, of course, raises a couple more questions: (1) When were the Middle Tracks installed? And (2) when were wayside telephones installed? My surmise is that wayside telephones were not installed until the big push to install Automatic Block signaling, beginning about 1911. 

As anecdotal information, the Special Instructions of the 1910 PRR New York Division have a whole page explaining what a telephone is, how it works, and how to use it! E.g. remove the black cone-shaped device from its hook and place it to the ear, and so forth. So the telephone was "brand new" technology on the railroad in that era. 

As for me, I'd go back to pre-telephone railroading in a heartbeat ! 

-- abram burnett