Elliston Feb 1953 - Oddball Left-Handed Signal - WHITE FLAGS

[NW Mailing List]

In the old East, Abe would certainly be a Minister of Communications  :-)

Your posts frequently remind me - we know the locomotives and track plans
and stations, but most of us (me, in particular) don't know the workflows
of the railroad, and those who do know are getting fewer with time.  I
really do appreciate you all taking the time to answer these questions.

Mike Rector.


On Wed, Jul 26, 2023 at 11:54 AM NW Mailing List via NW-Mailing-List <
nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:

> Mike has a way of drawing out interestingly in-depth information from Mr.
> Abe, Mr. Nichols and others. I’ll second what Mike noted earlier in this
> thread: Thanks for sharing this information!
>
> Matt Goodman
>
> On Jul 26, 2023, at 8:59 AM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> wrote:
>
> Comrade Milosh Rectorovich ye asketh:
>
> >>  Now for the followup question... did other railroads use this whistle
> signal, too?   -- Mike Rector  <<
>
> ANSWER:  Absolutely !    Every railroad which operated trains under the
> "Time Table - Train Order" method of operation had these procedures in
> their Rule Books.  The whistle signals were, almost without exception,
> uniform everywhere.
>
> Beginning in 1886, the American railroad industry had a "Standard Code of
> Operating Rules."  It was the product of the same Convention of Railroad
> Superintendents which, in 1883, gave us Standard Time (or as it was called
> early-on, Railroad Standard Time.)  It was published under the name
> "Standard Code of Train Rules and Block Signal Rules."  It was not binding
> upon any road, but was a set of recommended best practices, formulated by
> the Superintendents of the biggest and best-run railroads of the country.
>
> Almost all American railroads quickly adopted the Standard Code of Train
> Rules.  In addition to making the most efficient forms of railroading
> available to even the small railroads, it also created a pool of railroad
> employees who all understood the same basic operating concepts and could
> change employment from one railroad to another without having to learn an
> entirely new set of ways and procedures.  Deviations from the Standard Code
> of Train Rules were generally spelled out in the Special Instructions
> section of the Time Table.  The Standard Code also provided an early basis
> for crews of one railroad running on another railroad.  (Did not N&W crews
> run Trains 21 and 22, The Cannonball, on the Atlantic Coast Line RR between
> Petersburg and Richmond ? )
>
> The Standard Code was kept up to date with revisions and, thank goodness,
> the first several editions have large appendices giving the interpretations
> of the Committee to questions which had been submitted, the dates the
> various wordings were revised, and so forth.
>
> The original Standard Code had two major focii (that's the plural of the
> Latin word "focus,") namely, Train Orders and Block Rules.  The next work
> of standardization the Committee set itself to was the matter of
> interlocking, which was coming to the fore in the industry.  When Automatic
> Block Signaling came into the industry, the Committee came out with a set
> of recommended practices for that area, too.
>
> But each railroad was free to adopt the Standard Code, to modify it for
> their own situations, or to go-it-alone and make up their own Operating
> Rules.
>
> The one area of Operating Rules where you will notice non-uniformity among
> railroads is the matter of the whistle signal for "Calling in the Flag."
> (This refers to calling inn the flagman who had been providing Rule 99
> protection for the rear end of his train.)   The Standard Code was written
> in a day when most railroads were single track, and only a few had double
> track.  As railroads added third and fourth Main Tracks, the whistle
> signals for Calling in the Flag needed to be augmented to identify the
> specific track involved, so that the wrong flagman did not return to his
> train and leave it unprotected against a following train.  So, for
> instance, you will see an expanded set of whistle rules in the books of the
> NYC and the PRR.
>
> Sadly, the American railroad industry today has, through the
> bull-headedness and the  managerial arrogance of the various managements,
> abandoned the notion of uniformity.  The Western roads came up with their
> own Code in the 1950s.  The mid-Western roads came up with their own
> book-of-notions a bit later, the official name of which I have forgotten.
> Then when the CS&X Tee was put together, they came out with a massive
> encyclopedia which they expected their employees to remember and comply
> with.  Then, when some of the mid-Western roads around Chicago came to be
> controlled by the Canadians, something called the General Code of Operating
> Rules came to the birth.  Then, in the late 1980s, the railroads of the
> Northeast formulated the NORAC Rules (Northeast Operating Rules Advisory
> Committee,) which was probably the most efficient and most simple of the
> bunch.  And then the NS came up with its own set of operating rules,
> appropriately published in a regionally appropriate Grey cover and called
> by other railroads, the Farmer's Rule Book.  The advantages of
> uniformity have been lost.
>
> And yes, the N&W, the VGN, the NKP, the NYC&StL and the Wabash were all
> Standard Code railroads.
>
> (Caveat:  I have no interest in and do not follow all the shenanigans of
> modern railroading, run by lawyers and sharks, so don't ask me any
> questions about "modern" operating rules, the history of GCOR, and the
> suchlike things.  I now spend my time rockin'  grandbabies and hoein'
> turnips.)
>
> Thirty years ago I spent a day with a Canadian Train Dispatcher.  He told
> me the worst thing which had ever happened in their line of business was
> when the Government hijacked their Operating Rule Book.  The cussed thing
> is now so long-winded and so complex that the yearly rules class for
> operating employees requires five days to cover the material !  Someone
> forgot the Keep-It-Simple-Stupid principle.
>
> -- abram burnett
> Our Transistorized Turnips Comply with Moore's Law
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