I was watching an old western the other day and realized that trains were criss-crossing the US long before electricity was common place.
If I was on a train heading west, let’s say, at the break-neck speed of 35 miles per hour, and I saw a tunnel ahead, how would I know there wasn’t a train heading east that was going to meet me in the middle? Was there a one way track system everywhere? Did I have to know the schedules of all the trains that might be in the area? Were there signals of some sort that I could see that told me if other trains were on the same track as I was?
How was it all coordinated before the advent of the telegraph or electricity… especially in the outlying states and territories?
Before PC’s and instant messaging the railroads use “Train Orders”
Train one had an order to proceed to a certain location, often a passing track, and wait for further orders. Train two running in the opposite direction had orders to proceed to the same location and pass and order, ‘on the fly’ to the conductor of train one to proceed to next station or whatever and at the same time pick up if order to proceed to its next stoping point.
Morse ,land line, telegraphy with its distinctive click clacking told the station master what was going on up and down the line, and what orders to issue to expedite the movement of freight, mail, and passengers.
It was all done with mirrors. Ooops that should have said train orders and telegraphy.
Dispatching trains by telegraph started in 1851, the same year Western Union began business. Western Union built its first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, mainly along railroad rights-of-way.
Railroad telegraphers routinely handled message traffic at 40 to 50 wpm. Wrote out train orders while simultaneously listening to the traffinc directed to other agents.
BTW ''ted McElroy copied radio telegraph, slightly differend from land line variety, on a typewriter at IIRC something on the order of 150 wpm and could carry on a normal conversation at the same time. Circa 1940 or so.
Dispatching trains by telegraph started in 1851, the same year Western Union began business. Western Union built its first transcontinental telegraph line in 1861, mainly along railroad rights-of-way.
Railroad telegraphers routinely handled message traffic at 40 to 50 wpm. Wrote out train orders while simultaneously listening to the traffinc directed to other agents.
BTW Ted McElroy copied radio telegraph, slightly different from land line variety, on a typewriter at, IIRC, something on the order of 150 wpm and could carry on a normal conversation at the same time. Circa 1940 or so.
I’ve been involved in building large-scale trains for a few years and some of this has seeped into my brain. I can only realistically talk about North American trains, here, but I’d think it has some transferablility to other areas.
The idea of trains before telegraphy is almost askew. Remember that the transcontinental telegraph line preceded the building of the UP-CP railroad. And as the transcontinental line was built their own additional telegraph line was brought along with it.
As spingears has nicely explained, train orders and track rights can make the railroad reasonably efficient. Before the advent of telegraphy, however, trains were run mostly by timetable alone. That is the method that assumes that every train runs more or less on time and you know when your “meets” are scheduled to occur. You can probably imagine the havoc wreaked when a train broke down and threw the schedule off. For a shorter line this is less of a problem than it might seem. After all, if you’re only running three or four trains a day over a 60 mile stretch you may only have two or three train sets in your inventory.
And don’t underestimate the speed of those old trains. By 1860, or so, they were exceeding 60 mph, though the prudence of that speed is brought into question by the horror of some of their accidents…
on some single track lines here [U.K.] there was a token which the driver had to collect from the signal box before he could proceed and he had to turn it in at the next box. Some lines in Scotland still work like this - the West Highland line, I think.
The network also had a lot more manned signal boxes at one time, with a signalman to manually throw the points.
The Quintinshill railway disaster in 1915 (worst U.K. accident) was caused by two signalmen who were writing down the details of the trains passing over that track section on a bit of paper and copying it into the train book later, to conceal the fact that they were rearranging their shift schedules to suit their mutual convenience
Before the advent of colour light signals there were mechanical signals. These were usually a movable “finger” mounted high on a post and operated from a signal-box via wires or rods. These signal boxes were spaced all along the line and responsible for one section. They kept in touch with each other via the telegraph. So the whole network could be operated without the need of electricity ( apart from the telegraph batteries).
This system was used in Australia on outback single track lines (may still be so in some remote areas). The driver would slow down as he passed a certain station, and the stationmaster would be standing on the platform with a metal staff, which the driver would snatch up as he went past. Without the staff, you simply don’t enter that section of line. The staff would be given to the stationmaster at the other end (and if he was unpopular with the train crews, it would spend a few seconds in the firebox first ).
Also, a main leap forward in the late 19th Century was mechanical interlocking of signals and turnouts (switch points). Previously, the guy in the signal box would have to pull the lever to change the direction of the turnout, and also remember to change the signals accordingly. There were accidents due to the signalman forgetting to do one or the other, or more frequently, due to his getting it wrong. Even back then, many shunting or marshalling yards and station layouts were complex, and directing a train onto another track often had a knock-on effect for a number of different tracks. This led to signallers losing track (sorry). Mechanical interlocking meant the signalman merely had to throw the turnout lever, and all the signals which needed to flip to “danger” or “caution” would do so automatically. Modern computerised signalling still uses the same principles.
I believe that when they were really worried about other trains, they would have a brakeman walk in front of the train waving a flag or latern, far enough ahead to give any approaching train time to stop. The train thus would follow the breakman at walking speed – a case of better safe (and slow) than sorry.
And to this day, switch points are still called “interlockings.”
A point of interest: the computer programs that run the electronic versions of old interlocking controls use algorithms which exactly simulate the mechanical features of the interlocking switches. Since the system was perfect when it was invented, and everyone in the railroad industry was already familiar with it, there was really no point in making a new set of rules for the electronic version.
I’ve read a bit about this and have to correct friedo. Switch points, to this day, are called switch points.
Actually, they’re usually called merely points. I suppose switch points is more specific but everyone knows you’re talking about a switch when you say, “The 769 picked the points at Pulgas.” The term switch refers to the entire assembly of trackage that redirects the train’s direction.
Interlocking, as is quoted from dog’s site, refers to slaving the position of the switch to the signal aspect displayed. A sizable fraction of switches in use today are completely unsignalled. I’m referring to the switches that service small industries on branch spurs. Since there is only one local freight down a line working the industries at any time their is no need for signaling. And you can bet the RR’s ain’t gonna pay for something they don’t need.
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