NW-Mailing-List Digest, Vol 62, Issue 26

[NW Mailing List]

Thanks Ed:

Yes, that was great piece several years ago when two telegraphers
transferred a message faster than 2 knowledgeable texters of today and
they beat them handily. Another friend had also reminded me that
texting is today's shorthand language comparable to the abbreviations
of a century or more ago when only having the Morse wire.

The permanence of change, right?

Bob Cohen

>

> Mostly gone but not forgotten; I apologize for the inanity of the host but I seem to remember these two gentlemen on the Leno show but I can't find it.  In that bit the telegraphers handily beat the texters not only in time but in clarity.  Not sure what city this is in but if this guy is still the host of "BT" remind me to change the channel.....

>

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSqRSNQwDwg&feature=related

>

> Ed Svitil

> Norfolk & Western Railway

>

>> Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:04:48 -0500

>> Subject: The old Morse code and how things have changed

>> To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org

>> From: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org

>>

>> Friend Abram Burnett sends this along. While it is not N&W per se, its

>> contents can be transferred to any railroad and are as pertinent 70

>> years ago or even decades earlier to which they refer. And then the

>> current day's happenings then are now such a thing of the past.

>>

>> We like to live and re-live the past. This little piece shows a side

>> of that long-gone day we seldom consider.

>>

>> Enjoy.

>>

>> "A LOST LANGUAGE", by LeRoy Palmer. An Article appearing in the June,

>> 1940 issue of "Railroad Magazine", pages 89-92.

>>

>> As months and years drift by, the number of us old-time telegraphers

>> in rail service who know the train wire language is dwindling, like

>> the "thin blue line" and the "thin gray line" of Civil War veterans.On

>> practically all the main-line dispatching circuits the telephone has

>> displaced the telegraph. Only the oldest ops can remember the days

>> when the average train dispatcher had a "copier", a fast pen operator

>> who wrote all orders in the order book as the dispatcher issued them

>> and checked as each was repeated.

>>

>> In this era of telephone dispatching, the work is, of course, done

>> much more quickly. Orders are now repeated in one-fourth the time that

>> was required for even the "gilt-edge" Morse man, although the time and

>> all station names are spelled out, while train and engine numbers are

>> repeated on the telephone. The veteran brass pounder has to admit it,

>> even though he misses the vanishing language.  Formerly I could be

>> busy at my desk, or even reading the newspaper, and still hear the

>> train wire with its "OS" reports of trains passing over the district,

>> and thus I kept posted on everything approaching my station. Now I

>> hear nothing unless I sit with the telephone receiver hung over my

>> head. They took some of the romance and fascination away from

>> railroading when they installed telephones on the train wire.

>>

>> The twelve-hour night shift men were excellent "spotters". That is,

>> they were adept at catching much-needed sleep when opportunity offered

>> and they trained themselves to wake for their call. The old Morse

>> dispatchers knew that Bill or Joe was "in the hay" when they got no

>> answer on the first call and they would slowly repeat "RC  RC  RC DS"

>> or  "ZA ZA ZA DS," or whatever the call was, the repeated chatter

>> bringing the Op to life. This was customary and was well understood.

>>

>> One of the first things the op learned was to arouse from deep slumber

>> for his call.

>>

>> I remember the first job I ever worked, night operator for the

>> Milwaukee Road at Burlington, Wis., in 1901. I'd been on the job only

>> a few nights when. One morning just before daylight, I got mighty

>> sleepy and stretched out on the freight desk, with an "Official Guide"

>> making a soft pillow for my head, and was soon sleeping soundly. I

>> dreamed I was walking along a street, and as I passed a store I heard

>> a telegraph instrument tapping out "BU BU BU BY" which was my office

>> call. I thought, "Gosh! I'd better go in there and answer that. It's

>> my call!" The next thing I knew, I was tumbling off that desk onto my

>> feet as I realized that the Beliot dispatcher was hammering out slowly

>> "BU BU BU BU DS."

>>

>> I dove for the telegraph desk.

>>

>> I have had this same dream, or one very much like it, many times since

>> on similar occasions. Other old-time ops report having had identical

>> experience. Seldom would we get deep enough in the hay to fail to

>> recognize the familiar sounder call. There's not much excuse for

>> lightening slingers to drowse on an eight-hour shift nowadays, but

>> should a man working the late night, or third, trick in the heat of

>> Summer, slip off to dreamland between trains, the telephone bell is,

>> perhaps, not the equal of the old repeated Morse call to arouse him

>> from slumber.

>>

>> Perhaps you have sat in some wayside depot waiting-room and listened

>> to the clatter of the instruments in the telegraph office and wished

>> you could understand what was passing over the wire. But missing now

>> from the chorus of clicking sounders is the loudest one of all, the

>> sounder of the train dispatcher's wire. What you would hear now, if

>> you could read them, would be the message wire and the commercial

>> wire, carrying private telegrams. Gone is the hottest and fastest of

>> them all, the sounder with the mysterious abbreviations and language

>> of its own, which every student aspired to read. When a student could

>> read the train wire his education was complete; he was a full-fledged

>> op.

>>

>> In 1900 I was an apprentice at the CMStP & P depot in Elkhorn, Wis.

>> George Hayes was the daylight operator there. In addition to his

>> regular duties, he had the job of teaching two students, Bill Jones

>> and myself. Both of us were green farm hands. I don't know how dumb I

>> was as a ham, but I do remember that Mr. Hayes was in despair over

>> Bill. We both did learn, however. I became a boomer op, and the last I

>> heard of Bill Jordan he was the chief dispatcher for some Western

>> pike.

>>

>> I was given night work with the night man, a short, fat little Irish

>> fellow named Eddie uinane. Eddie was a prince. He used to send to me

>> faithfully an hour or so every night when he wasn't too busy, but he

>> was a rotten sender. The boys along the line had a hard time reading

>> him. But I got accustomed to the funny twists he put on his Morse, and

>> I had no trouble. Later on, when I was working along the line on the

>> extra board, if some op had to copy Eddie and I was around he'd make

>> me sit in and take Eddie's dots and dashes.

>>

>> Meanwhile, I put in about six months with Eddie, showing up when he

>> did at six p.m. and  quitting at one a.m. I was beginning to get

>> discouraged. I could read words off the Western Union commercial wire

>> pretty well, but I couldn't get used to those "cut" words used by the

>> dispatchers, even though I listened faithfully, trying to separate the

>> characters and make sense of them.

>>

>> I'll never forget that winter night when I opened the waiting room

>> door, hustled over to the huge coal stove to thaw out, and heard the

>> big train-wire sounder in the office rattling away. I listened a

>> moment, when -- just like that-- I could read the language!  Buy, was

>> I tickled!  What previously had been a jumble of sounds was now clear

>> to me. When Eddie came in a few minutes later, I had the joyous news

>> for him that I could read the train wire, and he seemed as pleased as

>> I was.

>>

>> After that, I was more anxious than ever to perfect myself. One day

>> George Hayes said to me: "Kid, I'm going to give you a note to W.H.

>> Melchoir, the chief train dispatcher at Beliot, and send you over to

>> take your examination. Eddie says you have your block rules learned

>> okay and you can read the train wire. They need operators and you are

>> good enough to start out."

>>

>> Next day I rode the morning local passenger train to Beliot. Mr.

>> Melchoir examined me and sent me to Burlington to work that very

>> night. There was no physical or standard rules examination at that

>> time, but you had to know the block rules. You had to know how to ask

>> the man east of you for a "47" before you let an eastbound train into

>> the block, etc. A "block" was the stretch of track between your office

>> and his, and "47" meant "Will hold all westbound trains until your

>> train arrives."

>>

>> Because the Morse train dispatcher had to work fast in order to keep

>> his trains moving, there came into use so many abbreviations that if,

>> as you sat in the wayside station waiting-room listening to the

>> sounders, you could have to read every letter that was passing over

>> the train wire, you still would have been unable to know what was

>> going on, unless you understood the code. You might have heard the

>> dispatcher and the op converse as follows: "Sa wn x w cmg ma hv 9 r

>> tm." snaps the dispatcher. {Say when extra west train is coming. I may

>> have orders for them.}

>>

>> "Art tnk c tr smk no," returns the op. "Es hr ty cm ty in ste nw."

>> {All right.  I think I see their smoke now. Yes, here they come. They

>> are in sight now.}

>>

>> "U gt nytng r em." asks the DS. {Have you got anything for them?}

>>

>> "Es abt 15 m wk," replies the operator. {Yes, about 15 minutes work.}

>>

>> "OK 31 cy 3 r em & let me kw hw mch wk ty gt at DR b4 c clr em ma hv

>> to chg tt meet wi 42 No 7s ab 20 m1  I'll hnd hm sm ti on tm at DR."

>> {Okay. Make 3 copies on a 31 order for them and let me know how much

>> work they've got at Darienbefore you clear them. May have to change

>> that meet with number 42. Number 7 is about twenty minutes late. I'll

>> hand him some time on them at Darien.}

>>

>> Hour after hour, with occasional periods of rest, twenty-four hours a

>> day, the sounder rattled on, Few words were spelled out in train

>> movement conversation, as this language -- the "cut" language of the

>> old Morse train wire -- clicked over the line.

>>

>> All railroad offices with telephone dispatcher's wire equipment have a

>> Morse circuit to fall back on in case of trouble on the phone wire.

>> The young operators dread this. If they happen to be working with an

>> old Morse dispatcher, they are in hot water trying to read his

>> abbreviated instructions. To a veteran, however, it's the old familiar

>> code.

>>

>> Morse men admit that the telephone, like the typewriter, makes for

>> greater efficiency. It standardizes operations, saves time and work,

>> and diminishes the hazards of the iron trail. But we of the old school

>> miss the romance of the earlier days of rugged individualism when you

>> reached for a brass key instead of a black telephone receiver, and

>> were proud of the bold, rapid, flowing strokes with which you wrote

>> your train orders by hand.

>>

>> And if a tobacco-chewing boomer op were suddenly yanked out of the dim

>> past and put to work on a teletype machine, his consternation would be

>> equalled only by his profanity. Teletypes are doing their bit to make

>> Morse a dead language. So far, you'll find 'em on only a few of the

>> big roads. The latest pike to install this system is the Erie, which

>> is now using teletype machines for their consist and passing report

>> systems.

>>

>> As every rail knows the consist of a freight train includes all of its

>> car numbers, listed in order, beginning at the head end. For each

>> carload are shown contents, tons, destination, route (including other

>> roads, if any such are needed to take the car to its destination), and

>> sometimes the name of the consignee. Ventilation, refrigeration, or

>> heating instructions are shown for perishable freight, and when

>> livestock was last fed and rested.

>>

>> All this information, in the case of the Erie, is transmitted by

>> teletype to the company's general offices at Chicago, Cleveland, and

>> New York, and to the district office at Jersey City, NJ, immediately

>> after hotshot freights have left the yards. There, centralized tracing

>> bureaus use the information to answer quickly all shipper and receiver

>> inquiries about the movement of cars -- inquiries that in days gone by

>> were answered with the aid of Morse conversation.

>>

>> A friend on the Erie tells me that when his company adopted teletypes

>> for its consist and passing report systems, last March, it converted

>> 845 miles of telegraph wire to printer circuits, making a total of

>> 2320 miles of these circuits now in operation on the Erie. Of this

>> total, he says, 2075 miles are equipped with duplex apparatus over

>> which messages or consists can be sent in both directions at the same

>> time.

>>

>> Morse experts concede that the telephone, the typewriter and the

>> teletype seldom fail and, as I pointed out, do the work more easily

>> and more rapidly. Few train dispatchers and ops would go back to the

>> obsolete system if they could. But now and then you'll run across a

>> mellow old boomer who sighs for the snappy Morse dialogue on the

>> dispatcher's wire that is fast becoming a lost language.

>>

>> Bob Cohen