CHICAGO JAMIESON-HIGGINS CO.

1902

[Ill.u.s.tration: Facsimile Of A Completed Order As Entered In The Despatcher's Order-Book]

DANGER SIGNALS.

PART II.

CHAPTER I

LEARNING THE BUSINESS--MY FIRST OFFICE

Seated in sumptuously furnished palace cars, annihilating s.p.a.ce at the rate of sixty miles an hour, but few pa.s.sengers ever give a thought to the telegraph operators of the road stuck away in towers or in dingy little depots, in swamps, on the tops of mountains, or on the bald prairies and sandy deserts of the west; and yet, these selfsame telegraph operators are a very important adjunct to the successful operation of the road, and a single error on the part of one of them might result in the loss of many lives and thousands of dollars.

The whole length of the railroad from starting point to terminus is literally under the eyes of the train despatcher. By means of reports sent in by hundreds of different operators, he knows the exact location of all trains at all times, the number of "loads" and "empties" in each train, the number of cars on each siding, the number of pa.s.sing tracks and their capacity, the capabilities of the different engines, the gradients of the road, the condition of the roadbed, and, above all, he knows the personal characteristics of every conductor and engineer on the road. In fact if there is one man of more importance than another on a railroad it is the train despatcher. During his trick of eight hours he is the autocrat of the road, and his will in the running of trains is absolute. Therefore despatchers are chosen with very special regard for their fitness for the position. They must be expert telegraphers, quick at figures, and above all they must be as cool as ice, have nerves of steel, and must be capable of grasping a trying situation the minute an emergency arises. An old despatcher once said to me: "Sooner or later a despatcher, if he sticks to the business, will have his smash-up, and then down goes a reputation which possibly he has been years in building up, and his name is inscribed on the roll of 'has-beens.'"

Before the despatcher comes the operator, and the old Biblical saying, "Many are called but few are chosen," is well ill.u.s.trated by the small number of good despatchers that are found; it is easy enough to find excellent operators, but a first-cla.s.s despatcher is a rarity among them.

I learned telegraphy some fifteen or sixteen years ago at a school away out in western Kansas. After I had been there three or four months, I was the star of the cla.s.s, and imagined that the spirit of Professor Morse had been reincarnated in me. No wire was too swift for me to work, no office too great for me to manage; in fact visions of a superintendency of telegraph flitted before my eyes. Such inst.i.tutions as this school are very correctly named "ham factories."

During my stay at the school I formed the acquaintance of the night operator at the depot and it was my wont to spend most of my nights there picking up odds and ends of information. For my own benefit I used to copy everything that came along; but the young man in charge never left me entirely alone. Night operators at all small stations have to take care of their own lamps and fires, sweep out, handle baggage, and, in short, be porter as well as operator, and for the privilege of being allowed to stay about I used to do this work for the night man at the office in question. His name was Harry Burgess and he was as good a man as ever sat in front of a key. Some few weeks after this he was transferred to a day office up the road and by his help I was made night operator in his stead. Need I say how proud I felt when I received a message from the Chief Despatcher telling me to report for duty that night? I think I was the proudest man, or boy rather, on this earth.

Just think! Night operator, porter and baggageman, working from seven o'clock in the evening until seven o'clock in the morning, and receiving the magnificent sum of forty dollars per month! It was enough to make my bosom swell with pride and it's a wonder I didn't burst.

Heretofore, I had had Burgess to fall back upon when I was copying messages or orders, but now I was alone and the responsibility was all mine. I managed to get through the first night very well, because all I had to do was to take a few "red" commercial messages, "O. S." the trains and load ten big sample trunks on No. 2. The trains were all on time and consequently there were no orders. I was proud of my success and went off duty at seven o'clock in the morning with a feeling that my services were well nigh indispensable to the road, and if anything were to happen to me, receivers would surely have to be appointed.

The second night everything went smoothly until towards eleven o'clock, when the despatcher began to call "MN," and gave the signal "9." Now the signal "9" means "Train Orders," and takes precedence over everything else on the wire. The situation was anything but pleasant for me, because I had never yet, on my own responsibility, taken a train order, and I stood in a wholesome fear of the results that might accrue from any error of mine. So I didn't answer the despatcher at once as I should have done because I hoped he would get tired of calling me and would tackle "OG," and give him the order. But he didn't. He just kept on calling me, increasing his speed all the time. In sheer desperation, I went out on the platform for five minutes and stamped around to keep warm, hoping all the time he would stop when he found I did not answer.

But when I returned instead of calling me on one wire, he had his operator calling me on the commercial line while he was pounding away on the railroad wire. At the rate those two sounders were going they sounded to me like the crack of doom and I was becoming powerfully warm.

I finally mustered up courage and answered him.

The first thing the despatcher said was:

"Where in h--l have you been?"

I didn't think that was a very nice thing for him to say, and he fired it at me so fast I could hardly read it, so I simply replied, "Out fixing my batteries."

"Well," he said, "your batteries will need fixing when I get through with you. Now copy 3."

"Copy 3," means to take three copies of the order that is to follow, so I grabbed my manifold order-book and stylus and prepared to copy. There is a rule printed in large bold type in all railroad time-cards which says, "Despatchers, in sending train orders to operators, will accommodate their speed to the abilities of the operators. In all cases _they will send plainly and distinctly_." If the despatcher had sent according to my ability just then he would have sent that order by train mail. But instead, from the very beginning, he fired it at me so fast, that before I had started to take it he was away down in the body of it.

I had written down only the order number and date, when I broke and said, "G. A. To." That made him madder than ever and he went at me again with increased violence the sounder seeming like the roll of a drum. I think I broke him about ten times and finally he said, "For heaven's sake go wake up the day man. You're nothing but a ham." Strangely enough I could take all of his nasty remarks without any trouble while the order almost completely stumped me. However, I finally succeeded in putting it all down, repeated it back to him, and received his "O. K."

When the train arrived the conductor and engineer came in the office and I gave them the order. The conductor glanced at it for a moment and then said with a broad grin, "Say, kid, which foot did you use in copying this?" My copy wasn't very clear, but finally he deciphered it, and they both signed their names, the despatcher gave me the "complete," and they left. As soon as the train, which was No. 22, a livestock express, had departed, I made my O. S. report, and then heaved a big sigh of relief.

Scarcely had the tail-lights disappeared across the bridge and around the bend, when the despatcher called again and said, "For G.o.d's sake stop that train."

I said, "I can't. She's gone."

"Well," he snapped back, "there's a good chance for a fine smash-up this night."

That scared me almost out of my wits, and I looked at my copy of the order. But it read all right, and yet I felt mighty creepy. About thirty minutes afterwards, I heard a heavy step on the platform and in a second the hind brakeman came tramping in, and cheerfully saluted me with, "Well, I reckon you've raised h--l to-night. 21 and 22 are up against each other hard about a mile and a half east of here. They met on a curve and engines, box-cars, livestock and freight are piled up in fine shape."

"Any one killed?" I asked with a blanched face and sinking heart.

"Naw, no one is exactly killed, but one engineer and a fireman are pretty badly scalded, and 'Shorty' Jones, our head man, has a broken leg caused by jumping. You'd better tell the despatcher."

Visions of the penitentiary for criminal neglect danced before my disordered brain; all my knowledge of telegraphy fled; I was weak in the knees, sick at heart, and as near a complete wreck as a man could be.

But something had to be done, so I finally told the despatcher that Nos.

21 and 22 were in the ditch, and he snapped back, "D--n it, I've been expecting it, and have ordered the wrecking outfit out from Watsego. You turn your red-light and hold everything that comes along. In the meantime go wake up the day man. I want an operator there, and not a ham."

When the day man came in, half dressed, he said, "Well, what the devil is the matter?"

Speech had entirely left me by this time, so I simply pointed to the order, and the brakeman told him the rest. Never in all my life have I spent such a night as that. The day man regaled me with charming little incidents, about men he knew, who, for having been criminally negligent, had been shot by infuriated engineers or had been sent up for ten years.

He seemed to take a fiendish delight in telling me these things and my discomfiture was great. I would have run away if I hadn't been too weak.

About seven o'clock in the morning, after a night of misery, he patronizingly told me, that it wasn't my fault at all; the despatcher had given a "lap order," and that the blame was on him. Well! the reaction was as bad, almost, as the first feeling of horror. I went home and after a light breakfast, retired to bed, but not to sleep, for every time I would close my eyes, visions of wrecks, penitentiaries, dead men and ruined homes came crowding upon my disordered brain.

About ten o'clock they sent for me to come to the office. I went over and Webster the agent said the superintendent wanted to see me. I had never seen the superintendent and he seemed to me to be about as far off as the President of the United States, but I screwed up my courage and went in. I saw a kindly-looking gentleman seated before Webster's desk, but I was too much frightened to speak and just stood there like a b.u.mp on a log. Presently, Mr. Brink, the superintendent, turned to Webster and said, "I wonder why that night man doesn't come?"

I tremblingly replied, "I am the night man, sir." He looked at me for a moment and smilingly said, "Why, bless my soul, my lad! I thought you were a messenger boy." He then asked me for my story of the wreck. When I had given it he seemed satisfied, and gave me lots of good advice; but in the end he said I was too young to have the position, and I was discharged. But he kindly added, that in a few years he would be glad to have me come back on the road, after I had acquired more experience. The next day I returned to school.

CHAPTER II

AN ENCOUNTER WITH TRAIN ROBBERS

My first attempt at holding an office had proved such a flat and dismal failure that I thought I should never have the heart to apply for another. I worked faithfully in the school for about a month, and then the fever to try again took hold of me. I knew it would be of no use to apply to my former superintendent, Mr. Brink, so I wrote to Mr. R. B.

Bunnell, Superintendent of Telegraph of the P. Q. & X. Railroad at Kansas City, Missouri, saying I was an expert operator and desired a position on his road. Mr. Bunnell must have been laboring under a hypnotic spell, for by return mail he wrote, enclosing me a pa.s.s to Alfreda, Kansas, and directing me to a.s.sume charge of the night office at that point at the magnificent salary of $37.50 per month. This was a slight decrease from my former salary, but I didn't care. I wanted a chance to redeem myself and I felt confident I could be more successful in my second attempt. So I packed my few belongings, bade good-bye to the school forever, and away I went.

When I left "MN," I said nothing to any one about my destination, and I did not know a thing about Alfreda, except that it was near the border line between Kansas and Colorado. The brakeman on the train in talking to me told me it was a very pleasant place; but when he said so I fancied I could detect a sarcastic ring in his voice, and I was in no doubt about it when I arrived and saw what a desolate, dreary place Alfreda was. The only things in sight were a water-tank, a pump-house and the telegraph office; and I wish you could have seen that office. It was simply the bed of a box-car, taken off the trucks and set down with one end towards the track. A small platform, two windows, a door, and the signal board perched high on a pole completed the outfit.

I arrived at six-thirty in the morning and there wasn't a living soul in sight. An hour later, a big broad shouldered Irishman who proved to be the pumper, came ambling along on a railroad velocipede. He looked at me for a minute, and after I had made myself known he grinned and said, "Well, I hopes as how ye will loike the place. Burke, the man who was here afore ye, got scared off by thramps, and I reckon he's not stopped runnin' yit." Fine introduction wasn't it?

I found there was no day operator and the only house around was the section house, two miles up the track. The operator and pumper boarded there with the section boss; but the railroad company was magnanimous enough to furnish a velocipede for their use in going to and from the station. How I felt the first night, stuck away out there in that box-car, two miles from the nearest house and twelve miles from the nearest town, I must leave to the imagination. My heart sank and I had many misgivings, in fact, I was scared to death, but I set my teeth hard and determined to do my best, with the hope that I might be promoted to a better office. I did win that promotion but I wouldn't go through my experiences again for the whole road.

One night after I had been working there about a month, I went to my office as usual at seven o'clock. It was a black night threatening a big storm. The pumper had not gone home as yet and he remarked, that it was "goin' to be a woild night," but he hoped "the whistlin' av the wind would be after kaping me company," and with that he jumped on the velocipede, and off he went.

I didn't much relish the idea of the storm, for I knew the reputation of Kansas as a cyclone state, and my box-car office was not well adapted to stand a hurricane. However, I went inside, and after lighting my lamps, sat down and wrote letters and read, when I was not taking train orders.

This office was kept up solely because it was a convenient place to deliver orders to freight trains at night when they stopped for water.

About twelve-thirty in the morning my door opened suddenly, and a man stepped quickly in. I was startled because this was almost the only man except the pumper and the train crews that had been there since I came.

Once in a while a stray tramp had gone through, but this man was not a tramp. He wore a long overcoat, b.u.t.toned to his chin, with the collar turned up. A slouch hat pulled well down over his eyes so far concealed his face that his features were scarcely visible. He came over to my desk and gruffly asked, "What time is there a pa.s.senger train east to-night?"

I answered that one went through at half past one, the Overland Flyer, but it did not stop at Alfreda. Quick as a flash he pulled a revolver and poking it in my face, said, "Young man, you turn your red-light and stop that train or I'll make a vacancy in this office mighty d----d quick."