Should its details
not have been completed when the despatcher is relieved, his successor
signs his initials thereto showing that he has received it. This is the
method of sending train orders, exact and simple, on single track
railroads. On double track lines the work is greatly simplified because
trains running in each direction have separate tracks. Does it not seem
simple? And how impossible are mistakes when its rules are adhered to.
It really seems as if any one gifted with a reasonable amount of common
sense, and having a knowledge of the rudiments of mathematics, could do
the work, but underneath all the simplicity explained, there runs a deep
current of complications that only long time and a cool head can master.
I have worked in offices and been figuring on orders for a train soon to
start out from my end of the division, when all of a sudden some train
out on the road that has been running all night, will bob up with a hot
box, or a broken draw head, and then all the calculations for the new
train will be knocked into a cocked hat.
The simple meeting order has been given above.
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