LETTER III.
HANDLING A YARD.
My Dear Boy:—You have asked me to give you some pointers on handling a yard. You will find that nearly all situations in a yard hark back to one simple rule, which is: When you get hold of a car move it as far as possible toward its final destination before you let go of it.
The training of a switchman is usually such that, if let alone, he will stick the car in the first convenient track and wait to make a delivery until he can pull every track in the yard and put with it all other cars with the same cards or marks. By this time some other fellow with a similar honesty of purpose but differently applied will come along and bury the car or block the first man in so that one engine has to stand idle. A yardmaster has to learn to keep his engines scattered and to hold each foreman responsible for the work of an engine. A good yardmaster knows in-
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