Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 59, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1908 — COOL-HEADED RAILROAD MEN. [ARTICLE]

COOL-HEADED RAILROAD MEN.

Slightest Mistake In S«h«tful« May f Cause Disaster. Give an inexpert anc«M person |k large railroad folder and you put more trouble in his hands than the pigs in the clover puzzle, skid a prominent railroad official the other day. “You will find that the average person has not the slightest idea how to decipher the arrival and departure of trains. Imagine, then, the Immense amount of work involved In arranging the schedules of the trains of a vast railroad system so they will dovetail smoothly and be got In working order at an appointed hour. Just for example; Each twenty-four hours hundreds of trains arrive at and depart from the Grand Central Station. The schedules have to be arranged to make conflict impossible. “The adjustment of the time tables devolves ultimately upon the chief operating official of the road. He notifies the official of each division that a new train is to reach a certain point at a certain hour and will depart after a change of engines five minutes later, being due to arrive at the other end of .the division at a certain hour.

“The trainmaster of the division must then prepare a tentative schedule of trains for his division, and this tentative schedule .must be Bent to the chief train dispatcher befofe the new train is put on. “Each additional train must involve a certain derangement of the schedule already in force. If the new train is a “flier” the derangement amounts ah most to disorder. The local and accommodation trains gre most a’ffectM by these changes, tfhey must get out of the way of the limited trains in plenty of time, and passengers on the local trains are very likely to chafe under the delays that are inevitable. It is next to impossible to convince people that these delays Really are inevitable —strange as they may seem. “When all of the tentative schedules providing for a new train are in hand, the chief train dispatcher is in a position to prepare a final scheduleHe must regard, especially in limited trains, the hours at which trains are expected to leave and arrive at important points. He cannot run a train along the line of least resistance, for at the hours when there are fewest obstacles In the way of a ’flier’ there might be the greatest likelihood of no passengers being in waiting at the most important stations. “When all the data are in hand, the schedule is prepared and notifications are sent out to all of the Division Superintendents. But the experimentation does not end here. There is a great deal to he done by way of adjusting experience to operation so the strain on the rolling stock may be least.

"In preparing a schedule Tor a long-distance run it is essential to establish an average hourly mileage for the entire distance. It is not possible to test the running time between two neighboring points and by adding these together to arrive at the maximum speed possible to attain between two distant points, The theory of these averages is that the train shall leave sufficient leeway to make up time when necessary. It has been found, however, that engineers will loaf along over parts of their trip in order to make faster time than their schedules call for over other portions pf the route. “It can, therefore, be seen that all must be ready as far as it can he figured out by man, and the benefit inexperience. adds greatly to the making of a schedule in the rough that will work out to a nicety when the train is actually under way.”