Folks, I've added a great explaination of Train Orders as used on the NYC/PC Michigan Division here in Indiana to my Railroads of Madison County web site at:. The writeup by Maurice Lewman is complete with scanned orders that illustrate the story. For railfans and modelers alike, you can get a good idea of how and _why_ Train Orders were used. Go to: http://madisonrails.railfan.net/ and take the memory pages link in the NavBar or scroll down the main page to the General Orders block for the link there. Roger Hensley === East Central Indiana HO Railroad === === http://cid.railfan.net/eci_new.html ===
Roger, that is pretty fascinating stuff. I wonder how many people in today's railroad industry could handle the jobs that the dispatchers, yard clerks, station masters, etc. did back in those days? It required some brain power, obviously a fantastic knowledge of the track/territory that you were controlling, and probably of the various crews and their personalities. Subtle things like "The train was too long for the siding" probably wouldn't phase some dumb kid in today's world. He'd get the whole system backed up for a simple thing liket that, just because "it wasn't in the computer". Sorry, I'm becoming an old curmudgeon, but if you read between the lines in all of that text, there was some serious thought and intelligent action taken back then. Too bad we don't educate people like we used to, eh?
There was serious thought put into those operations. Maurice and I sat in my living room when he gave me copies of the orders and discussed operations back then. Yes, they did some things then that wouldn't be done today including writing an order to let the train crews handle a three train see-saw meet. Absolutley fantastic stuff. Oh, did I tell you about the photos of the Mohawk on the ground in South Anderson... Another day.
Roger and Fitz. In 1961 I had a dispr that took forever to make up his mind where to have trains meet and more trains had to stop and wait for their orders which meant that the engine was a mile past the station and the brakeman had to walk back to the station to get the orders.. He was always meeting trains at sidings that were to short and you can guess which train always got the siding. Several times he gave meets where both trains were too long and like you said they did the only thing they could. See, saw back and forth. We had some pretty sharp train crews that could do that in a very short time. At that time they all had radios. More than once he had trains backed up all along the line. I was surprised that dispr lasted 6 months
