I once read a story written by the late Cookie Eberhardt who was working as the agent in a depot on the old Monon. He had orders to give to a train crew and hooped up the orders to the crew in the cab of the slow moving freight without any problem. The train started picking up speed and Cookie noticed that there was no one hanging off the caboose to get the orders for the rear end. Sure enough, they went by and no one was on the rear platform, the crew probably snoozing. Cookie's reaction? He fired the entire order fork at the now receding caboose where it hit the door and landed on the platform. Orders delivered!

Les

Here's a series of Library of Congress, Jack Delano stills depicting the use of wayside train order loops.

Apparently, proving one had the mettle to stand with an order hoop in front of a train bearing down at speed was a rite of passage for new operators...

I present this poem by a Mr. Charles Dayley. I understand the author was a young operator at Fort Wright at the time of the occurrence (read it on the internet, so it must be true :-) The text is evocative, and deserves to be included in any display about hooping up orders. It's a shame that in another generation, there will be no one who understands what the rest of the poem is about, but I guess that's our mission as rail preservationists.


Old Brass Pounders Tale


The hoghead roared when he saw my board
What's that fool at Fort Wright doing?
He tore his hair and reached for the air
That new kid is in for a chewing
He knows we'll stall if we stop at all
And won’t make Lamont on the wait
The wheels streamed gold as the brakes took hold
The westbound was going to be late

Well, the DS had said to show him the red
While he checked out his plans with the chief
Then, out of nowhere, the westbound was there
And the delayer was facing some grief
I broke in on the wire and the DS spit fire
The sounder bounced 'round on it's base
That tub of lard at Hillyard yard had fallen asleep on his face

The missing OS put the old DS
in a spot he sure didn't like
"We'll clear that guy and hurry him by-
I'll fix him up down the pike"
I cleared that fellow, showed him the yellow
The big man replied with a roar
He was coming hard, as I filled out the card,
and made a wild dash for the door

The platform was dark, I guessed at the mark
And I prayed that I wasn't too near
It' s so hard to stay eight inches away
ignoring the terrible fear
With steam in my face, I stood there in place
Felt the hoop snatched away in the night
The hogger's scream chased the headlight's beam
Still mad enough to fight

I breathed a sigh and watched him by,
Saw the markers blink out on the curve.
Then ran inside, OS'd with pride
And the DS said "kid, you've got nerve
The SP&S would have been in a mess
If that guy had stalled there tonight"
I'll tell Spokane there's a railroad man
A'workin' at old Fort Wright


Charles Dayley

I remember my first time hanging on orders like it was yesterday. 3 GP-38s in full song in Notch 8 making 40 mph with 10000 tons of coal train in tow and horns blaring for the grade crossing just before the tower. Add to the challenge was where I stood was on the outside of curve giving more perception troubles. Your brain is telling you normal people don't purposely stand where you are standing,then you remember you aren't normal, you are a railroader.

The operator I was posting with provided some sage advice by saying "Just stand up there like you mean it and don't get hit". After a bit you get good at it and then one day it's your turn to bust in a newbie, I conveyed the same advice to which he looked at me like I was nuts. It was also the same look I gave my posting operator some years earlier.

Les, it's a story. No operator would do that and leave his/her station/tower with one less fork when it probably had only three or four. Let the sleeping conductor take the heat and not you for loosing a fork.

Marty -

Maybe. Cookie reported that the fork was quietly "dropped off" the next freight coming the other way.

Les

A good friend who was an operator on a major local railway often allowed me to hoop up orders to passing trains late at night.

The comments about being blinded by the headlight are right on- and it's pretty unnerving when big carloads of lumber thunder past with loose strapping whistling through the air. Decapitation is never fun!

The locals here call both the forks and hoops the same thing- hoops.

Steve Hunter

And the train-order string or twine used in the Y-shaped TO forks is a versatile product of many uses after the orders have been received. Not quite as universal as duct tape, but it can be used for securing things like broken radio speaker mounts, doors that won't stay closed, etc.

The "hoop rack" shown in the photo sequence was an earlier version of a device I've seen in action: The new model could be lowered, so the operator didn't have to climb a ladder, then raised to be in position for the train crew.

Our hoop rack (or speed rack as we called it) was just such a device that you could load with the forks at ground level, then raise it up into position. Both the Towers I worked at, in East Dallas and at Ft. Worth's Tower 55, used the same style of racks. (I think I still have several balls of that cotton twine around the house here somewhere)