Train orders

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

Train order hoops...hadn't thought about those in a long time.......
I worked as a Penn Central/Conrail block operator in the 1970's-80's and 
handed up many a train order /clearance card (Form A). The first day of training I 
was instructed to not hold the hoop pointed near my body in case it hit the 
engine in which case it could drive the hoop handle right through me. Made a 
lot of sense. We used the kind of hoop which was a forked stick which held the 
train order string which held the paperwork and the crew would take only the 
string and orders. 
The best train order string was a waxed twine (we sometimes had to put up 
with the fuzzy cheap stuff). Two nails were driven into the inside wall of the 
office about 2-2.5 feet apart and one end of the ball of twine was tied to a 
nail. Then we would wrap the whole ball round and round the nails. When finished 
we cut through the lower end of the loop and then we had uniform pieces of 
train order string. 
When it came time to hand up orders we took one string, held it by the ends 
and then made a small slip knot and put the other end of the string inside the 
knot and then did the same for the other end of the loop. The paperwork was 
inserted into the center and the string pulled tight trapping the orders. 
The next big trick was to stand at the right distance from the track so that 
when the engine went by the fork would not hit it and the engineer could put 
his fisted arm through the center of the "Y" and the train order string would 
come out of the fork and the loop of string with the orders was secured on the 
engineer's arm. Of course, there was always the crewman who tried to pick the 
string off with his fingers or misjudged the center of the "Y" and wacked his 
hand on the metal part of the fork.
Crews were supposed to slow down to pick up orders so as to not injure the op 
or get injured themselves and we had a right to pull the hoop away if the 
speed was too fast which forced the train to stop. I remember handing on to an 
Amtrak train when as it started past some water hit me and I flinched causing 
the crewman to miss and the train to stop and send a man back. The head end 
needed the orders but not so with the rear end.
Gosh, those were fun times!

Jim Kehn
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/private/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20050123/410934b2/attachment.html