Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 143, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1911 — HAVE THEIR OWN CODE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HAVE THEIR OWN CODE

HOW ENGINEERS AND CROSSING GATEMEN COMMUNICATE. ■ .' . . ' Latter Frequently Tell the Former How Many Minutes Late They Are as the Trains Shoot ■ By - '• : . With a mystic spell of waving arms, communicating messages from the

brakeman to the engineer, freight trains are broken and shifted and side-tracked and moved about at pleasure. With tile same silent _ telegraphy passenger trains are started at their dlf-

ferent stops, backed at flag stations to take on milk cars, and Handily manipulated frdm one end of the line to the other. In the railroad business, even more than in the profession of symbolic dancing, every little movement has a meaning all its own. Such signs as these, however, are familiar to all who travel. If their meaning Is not exactly known, their general purpose Is universally recognized, so there is nothing of a mysterious nature about them. But did you ever see a sign between< a crossing gateman and an engineer, one standing at his post to guard the life and limb of people on the highway and the other clipping, by at sixty miles an hour, with a rush and a roar and a'billowing tidal wave of thick, black smoke, and a wake of dust and cinders and flying scraps of paper and sleeper splinters and springing

which might have been a sign? For gatemen at times communicate with engineers in this way by some individual code <A their own-known One form of gateman’s signal which would be useful to any engineer on a train regularly maintaining a high speed Is one which some railroad men employ. It Is a time signal. Minutes mean everything when they begin to mean miles, and an engineer on an express run has always something better to do than pulling out his watch to see what time it Is and whether he Is getting late or not. Here Is where the friendly gateman’s time signal comes In handy. • v . The gateman, equipped with an excellent watch of his own, knows at what time the train ,1s due at his crossing, and is on the lookout for It, keeping tab on how late Jt is. If he finds that it Is late,. Then, when the train comes, with the engineer hanging out of its high window to nod him the good day of fellowship, he holds up his hand, extending clearly enough fingers to Indicate the minutes the engineer has lost The cab shoots by and the opening throttle gathers speed from the singing wheels, urging the train faster and faster. There Is, of course, no occasion for the *usemore than one hand under this system, bepause any experienced engineer would know without knowing the* time. If he had lost over five minutes. It is not an improvement over train dispatching by telephone In the cab, or even a very. positive way of railroad communication at all, but to the man above the big driving wheels every little bit helps, and It is always good for him, as for anyone else, to know that he has a friend by the side of the road.

"Some Individual Code of Their Own."