Letters from an old railway official/Letter 22
LETTER XXII.
WRECKS AND BLOCK SIGNALS.
My Dear Boy:—You ask what we are going to do to prevent so many wrecks. My various admonitions to you have been in vain if I have failed to score some points looking to that end. We must get closer to our men, improve their discipline, which means also their spirit. We must have more official supervision. We must pay division officials better salaries. The minimum pay of a division superintendent, regardless of the price of wheat, should be $300 per month and expenses, with such greater amount as the importance of the division demands. Trainmasters cannot be expected to enforce discipline and set an example in neatness if paid less than some of their conductors and enginemen. Not a bad rough rule for fixing intermediate salaries is to split the difference between the highest man in one grade and the lowest in the next higher, and then add enough to make convenient even money. Do not think you are saving money if you avoid raising the pay of your officials when you raise that of employes.
Wrecks are a reflection of administration. Sometimes cause and effect are years apart, so distant, in fact, as to be almost unrecognizable. Adversity makes heroes and the more disorganized we find conditions the more comprehensive and earnest should be our efforts to seek the cure. Neither public opinion nor our own self-respect will stand for shifting too much of the blame to our predecessors. Whatever safety appliances we adopt we shall never be able to eliminate entirely the element of human judgment, we shall never get beyond trusting somebody. Therefore we must train our men to alertness. We must build up a loyalty that pervades every rank. Those roads have the fewest wrecks due to defective equipment which cater to the welfare of their men. Such roads do not expect a man to live on air. When repair work is slack they put their men to building cars and engines, taking advantage of the low price of material. If we have to operate so closely that we cannot make such wise investments in influence, we are grading the way to disaster. We are preparing to pay out later in wrecking, personal injuries, maintenance and renewal of equipment, much more than the expense of anticipating future needs by keeping our men employed and contented. No amount of engine and car inspection can overcome inherent defects due to careless workmanship. Will the track walker who knows not when he will be laid off prevent as many disasters as he whom we find time to tell in advance what tenure to expect? We can overdo this matter of running our railroad too strictly in accordance with the auditor’s statistical blue print. As surgery the operation is a great success, but unfortunately the patient dies.
We have divided responsibility sufficiently when we furnish both the conductor and the engineman a copy of the train order. If it is desirable for the brakemen and the fireman to be informed, we should furnish a copy to each man in the crew. What is everybody’s business becomes nobody’s business. Even if it were practicable it is undesirable, this idea of showing the orders to every member of the crew. It would seem better to have three different standard signals for an engineman whistling into town; one indicating a wait order or a meeting point, either by time table or train order; another indicating a passing point, and a third indicating no other trains to be considered. The wrong signal sounded by the engineman should cause the conductor to stop the train with the air before the switch is reached. Some roads now have the engineman sound a prescribed signal, after the station whistle, to indicate orders to be executed. The objection to this is that valuable time may be lost by the conductor before being sure whether or not he heard the signal. A condition should not be indicated in a negative manner by the failure to do something. All indications should be of a positive nature, that a positive understanding may result and positive action be taken. It may be a little hard to give up the good old long blast for stations, but safety demands some such modification.
The fad for main track derails at interlocking plants seems nearly to have ditched itself. We are realizing that it is not necessary to kill an engineman who runs past a signal. The money that such unnecessary derailments have cost might better have been spent in enforcing discipline by increased official supervision. If main track derails were proper for an interlocking plant, it would logically follow that every block signal should be interlocked with a derail. Desirable as they are on auxiliary low-speed routes, it is doubtful if derails have any place in a main track, even at drawbridges. We are learning, too, that a good derail can be installed without cutting the rail.
Public opinion is aroused on the subject of our failure to safeguard human life in proportion to our progress in other matters. We must cough up the money for more block signals. I say block signals, not because they are the panacea for the evil that many people imagine, but because they are the best safeguard yet devised. They are useless without proper discipline and supervision. The vertical plane coupler is not all that can be desired. Yet if modern equipment had to stand the slack of the link and pin it would be in a bad way. The block signal even with the train staff or the train tablet is far from perfect. It is impolitic, however, for us to hesitate too long before going down into our clothes for the coin. While waiting for the perfect method to be developed the perfect man may be evolved and bump the most of us out of our jobs.
There will be fewer wrecks when executive and general officials have better control of temper and judgment. Feeling in an indefinite way the responsibility for an appalling wreck, the high official thinks he must do something. He butts in with some ill-considered instructions which breed distrust of the entire system of running trains, which discount the whole organization. This action may result for a time in an abnormal, unhealthy vigilance, which is certain to be followed by a demoralizing reaction. When a condition, like a man, gets the drop on you the only sane thing to do is to throw up your hands for the time being. Wisdom consists in looking for the true prime cause of the aforesaid drop. The frontal attack on a buzz saw is suicidal. Always take it in flank.
When you get your block signals, consider the permissive block as an abomination before the Lord. The only block to have is the positive block in both directions. If there is trouble in a block, let the dispatcher give the delayed train a message to flag over. Encourage your men to flag over, block or no block, against any train on the road when common sense dictates such a course. The object of all rules is to run trains with safety, not to tie them up on technicalities. Flagging means good flagging, signals as sure and unmistakable as fixed signals. Some day we shall find time to instruct our flagmen uniformly. They should all either put the red light on the end of a tie and swing the white light across the track, or they should swing both lights; not sometimes one way, sometimes the other. A red light of itself means stop. If the flagman swings it he runs a big risk of blowing it out. In matters of this sort there cannot be too much uniformity for all roads. Where we run uniformity into the ground is where we fail to recognize the radical differences in individual characteristics of men of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the prairie type.
Realization, if not repentance, must precede salvation. We must save ourselves. If not, the government doctrinaires will undertake a task for which we are better qualified. We cannot stop killing people to-day or to-morrow, this year or next. The problem is not as easy for us as for the oft cited English railways. Their block signals are a coincidence, not a prime cause of their safer operation. Much of our mileage has only a speculator’s or a promoter’s excuse for existence. Much of our traffic is so thin that English thoroughness would put a part of our lines out of business, much to our relief, but much to the intolerance of the public. Until our systems are sufficiently stable to remove the tempting sign, “Please kick me,” from the view of the financial manipulator, we cannot keep out of the scrimmage, we cannot build up as safe and conservative operating organizations as the English. We can, however, do much better than we are doing. Automatic devices will help, but they are only a check. The balance lies, my boy, in developing the human interest of the men, high and low, who work for the road.