Now you understand the challenges of interpreting railroad history to today's audiences, who never interacted with trains in their everyday lives. The stories are fleeting and need to be preserved now before they are gone.

> I am really surprised that that much of the
> "old daze" is already forgotten! A
> TEAM of five guys WORKED TOGETHER to get the
> job done. The old rulebooks, and it is
> carried into the new, have all the signals
> necessary to get the job done without
> radios.
> Quickly grab "a holt of" some
> oldtimers and get this stuff set down for
> your next museum project before it all goes
> away. It is a lot of fun to work safely
> without radios (knowing that the piece of
> paper in the conductors pocket gives you
> ownership of that piece of track) and you
> will find it can be done, although with a
> slightly different view of the time it takes
> to do the job.

> Having only worked in train service for the
> last few years, I'm frankly amazed that
> anyone survived more than a couple of years
> in the pre-radio days.

It's like this: if you had to walk 100 car lengths every time you wanted to ask the conductor or engine foreman a question ("What do you mean now??"), it was a very good incentive to learn to follow along with what is transpiring on the job.

>No two hand signals
> by no two people look alike and given the
> possible multiplication by a five man crew,
> the chance for misinterpretation is very
> real.

The are alike enough in order to function as a means of communication, otherwise the practise wouldn't have gotten started, let alone continued for over 100 years. People give hand signals the same way they talk. If they tend to speak quickly or mumble and slur their words, they do the same with hand signals.

If you draw a line roughly between Chicago and NO, then the daylight hand signals are different east of this line than west of it. The lantern signals are the same on both sides. Don't know why. The [Spanish] daylight hand signals on the FCP in Mexico are the same as [English] US Western hand signals (in other words, if you knew the Western hand signals, you wouldn't have to learn Spanish).

>Railroading is still a very dangerous
> occupation, even with radios, and I
> sometimes wonder how anyone lived to retire
> in the old days..

The introduction of pack sets has been the biggest factor in dumbing-down the operating crafts. We've gone from self-initiative railroading to "mother may I".

In case you're wondering, I have 34 years in switching and engine service for a major class 1 carrier whose name shall be kept anonymous in order to protect the guilty. When I started, it was 16 hours, *no* radios , and no computers. Pony phones, schedules, trainorders, footboards, mud-hops, and hand-muck switch lists yes.

With the oil fire drumming in one ear, the air pump in the other, listening to the exhausts, clanks and groans of the engine those radios are about worthless anyhow. Static and garble is about what comes over them.

Yeah, I like hand signals. Giving legible hand signals is one of the first things included in a newcomers safety kit.

Local variations in hand signals usually related to the identity of the different tracks in a yard when making up or breaking up trains. Boomers were welcome on most railroads because they had a breadth of experience compared to home guards, but were not as useful in the yards until they picked up on the local signal jargon.

Dave

irondave@bellsouth.net

Safe train operation was more than the work of one crew. Tower and station operators were more numerous, and like today were required by the rules to check out passing trains. Crews on trains in sidings would do the same, as would the crews of moving trains that met each other on the roll. If there was a problem the rear end crew would be told by hand or lantern signals, often including the portion of the train where the problem was located (front, middle or rear). Then the rear end freight crew would use the conductor's brake valve to let the engineer know to bring the train to a stop and they would hit the ground to check it out. The head end brakeman would be sent back to help and find out what the expected problem was. Hotboxes and shifted loads were the most common problems. There were also signals to indicate all was well after these inspections. In switching the crew would relay hand and lantern signals along the length of the train, with some crew sizes determined by the number needed to do this in typical situations. What seems hard to understand now was routine then, and the rules evolved based on hard experience.

Museum of Transportation
rdgoldfede@aol.com

> With the oil fire drumming in one ear, the
> air pump in the other, listening to the
> exhausts, clanks and groans of the engine
> those radios are about worthless anyhow.
> Static and garble is about what comes over
> them.

I agree; even with the speaker in our steam engine just above my head, it is often almost impossible to make out what is being transmitted. (Diesels are much quieter.)

> Yeah, I like hand signals. Giving legible
> hand signals is one of the first things
> included in a newcomers safety kit.

I prefer hand signals in all of our switching too, and training in hand signals is an important part of our brakeman training. As stated elsewhere, if you don't understand the hand signal, you don't move until it is clarified.

As for radios, we usually have two trains running (and switching) at once, so require the engine number to be part of every transmission in order to avoid confusion over which engine the transmission is for. But with hand signals there is no confusion as to who they are for. And I am something of a purist anyway; after all, we are trying to preserve the whole railroad experience of the "old days". I do concede that radios are good for calling the dispatcher or communication with another train.

Chris H.

> Local variations in hand signals usually
> related to the identity of the different
> tracks in a yard when making up or breaking
> up trains. Boomers were welcome on most
> railroads because they had a breadth of
> experience compared to home guards, but were
> not as useful in the yards until they picked
> up on the local signal jargon.

> Dave


holombo.chris@ssd.loral.com

Several years ago I saw a wonderful picture of a switcher working a rasin processing plant in Fresno, California. The picture would have dated from sometime pre-WWII and maybe from the teen's or twenties. It was taken from an elevated position and looked over a multiple track yard. It was part of a traveling agricultural exhibit from Fresno county.

The switcher had a string of box cars that were being spotted and the engine was on the curving lead track toward the switches. The fireman (this is an SP oiler-burner) was looking backward from his window; the engineer was out of view, but probably also looking back. The first switchman (brakeman) was up on the roof of the first box car behind the engine. Several cars down was another brakeman who you could tell was looking toward someone on the ground. All of these men had a stance of someone intently watching and ready to move an arm to pass on a signal (or call it across the cab).

To pass signals along a curve track, etc. any switch crew (or road crew) required multiple members. The use of radios reduced this need.

Elsewhere in this thread there is a posting about the regional differances of hand signals. The eastern half of the country uses the daytime flag singals that are the same as the lantern signals. These are in the rule books in the west, but were augmented by an additional group of signals that were extensively used. These include the "come to me", "go away from me", "come toward me to give me a pin (get slack to open coupler)", "stretch the train to test the coupling", and many others. Some switch crews developed their own short hand signals like one to indicate "tie up the train and go to beans."

Brian Norden

bnorden49@earthlink.net

> On long freight trains, in the days before
> radio was in common use, communication was
> either face to face or by hand signal. If
> there was work to be done at a station, the
> conductor would usually tell the engineer
> the plan before the train left the initial
> terminal. Remember, they were usually
> required to compare watches and go over any
> train orders that they had before leaving
> the initial terminal. When ready to depart,
> the conductor would give the engineer the
> proceed signal and board the caboose as it
> rolled by (that's why cabooses had the big
> curved grab irons).

> If for some reason the conductor needed to
> give the engineer some information once the
> train was underway, either he or one of the
> other rear end crewmen would walk up to the
> locomotive to pass the information on. If
> they had to stop and then restart the train,
> they would simply use hand signals. If you
> needed to give a hand signal from the rear
> of the train and it was around a curve or
> otherwise out of sight of the head end, the
> solution was simply to have the rear
> brakeman walk along the car tops until he
> was on a boxcar in the middle of the train
> where he could see both ends or another crew
> member. They would relay the hand signal
> from the rear end to the head end. This
> practice continued well into the radio age
> as early radios:a) were very bulky and
> typically only used from inside the
> locomotive or caboose and b) were not nearly
> as reliable or durable as the radios we have
> today.
==================================================

I would have thought that by now, in this grand discussion on Railroad signaling, the word "Steam Whistle" would have been typed somewhere across the computer screen.
In addition to the lantern, hand signal, pocket watch, time table and lighting a fusee, the steam whistle and air brake line signal (better term?) were also used to communicate between the head and read end of the train.

As we all know the classic whistle sequence of
"- - 0 -" (long, long, short, long... whistle) was for all grade crossings. And we all have heard the
"o o"= short, short..whistle by the engineer, meaning, release brakes, proceed.

I recall seeing in use and listing to the PRR "Inductive" trainphone system in the mid-1960's by PRR operaters @ Colsan tower in Bucyrus, Ohio.
It was the best the PRR had at the time and truly a most unique and advanced radio system, but the two way radio was much better (most clear and concise) to communicate with.

Amazing to look at all of the railroad communication history.

Interesting topic to discuss.

Ron Widman.

Crestline PRR Roundhouse
r35bl4s@juno.com

I don't think that CN was the only road to do this, so I am surprised no one has mentioned it. Leaving passing tracks there would be small signs on the telegraph poles that read "40 CARS", "60 CARS" and "80 CARS". This way the engineer could pull out of a siding and slow down when he got to the point where the van would be clearing the switch. The brakeman could crack the train line valve on the back-up hose as he bailed off to set the switch. Once back on, he could close the valve to restore the train line pressure and indicate a highball. Should he fail to reboard, the brakes would eventually apply and stop the train.

neilpr@sympatico.ca

One other thing that comes to mind concerning stopping train movements is this. When a passenger train was being backed up, especially into a stub type station, the practice on many railroads was for the conductor or another trainman to apply the brakes as needed-not the engineer. The engineer would watch the brake pipe gauge to release the brakes when the conductor closed the conductor's valve, indicating that braking was no longer desired.

awalker2002@comcast.net

> I am really surprised that that much of the

> "old daze" is already forgotten! A
> TEAM of five guys WORKED TOGETHER to get the
> job done. The old rulebooks, and it is
> carried into the new, have all the signals
> necessary to get the job done without
> radios.
> Quickly grab "a holt of" some
> oldtimers and get this stuff set down for
> your next museum project before it all goes
> away. It is a lot of fun to work safely
> without radios (knowing that the piece of
> paper in the conductors pocket gives you
> ownership of that piece of track) and you
> will find it can be done, although with a
> slightly different view of the time it takes
> to do the job.
It was not that long ago (less than 20 years) I was an engineer on a switch job when we still had five people. The only time the radio came on was the dispatcher trying to call us. We worked faster to me it semed without the radio,and safer also. Many crews use the radio as a crutch......it should be used as a tool...radios go out,but your arm always works!

kbcotton@flash.net