I believe there was an item a few years ago in “Ask Trains” about the last use of telegraph in railroad dispatching. Can anyone quote the issue date?
[#welcome] to the forums…
Interestingly enough, a google search of Telegraph Train Order turned up this article on Trains newswire about them…
Hope this helps…
“The train order’s ultimate demise was sealed in 1986 by a national agreement between the railroads and the Transportation Communication Employees Union giving dispatchers the right to issue movement instructions directly to train crews, bypassing operators, in what is called Direct Train Control (DTC) territory. Up to that time the TCEU (previously the Order of Railroad Telegraphers) had jealously guarded its right to such work, and exclusive work rules had for years prohibited the adoption of a more modern system.”
Same thing happened in the radio business back in the 1950s. When radio stations began switching technology to play records (for cost and convenience reasons) after years of broadcasting live music programs, the union mandated that it had to be a union musician placing the record on the turntable and dropping the needle. The first radio station I worked at in the late 1970s still had three or four elderly union musicians running the board. Even though I had a first class certificate, the local rule was that NO ONE except those four guys could touch the board or transmitter controls.
Not dispatching, but telegraphy in general:
“Railroad” magazine noted that the Eau Claire line of the Milwaukee Road was the location of the last use of railroad telegraph on a regular basis in the U.S., with the agents at Eau Claire and Durand still using it until the mid-1970’s. Don’t recall the date of the issue.
A retired BN dispatcher working a joint station with MILW:
I was working at Maple valley one summer evening in about 1976 and sent a payroll wire to J W Stuckey in Chicago for the trolley crew foreman. This was done using MA Tacoma as a Relay office however. Morse was out on the coast on the BN by then but I remember noting that the Milw still has a wire that worked. The following week the wire was “open” and it was never used again. Thats about the last of it except I understand BN had a local wire from Spokane to Cheney/Ritzville for about a year after that.
MILW’s International Intermodal manager reports:
I do not recall the date other than the late '70’s but one morning I did not receive my usual copy of #200’s train list and went up to the relay ofc in CUS to request a copy and it turned out they did not have theirs either. Rather than pick up the “city” phone and call, Merv Nimbar got on the wire (to Tacoma, I assume) and requested the train list be sent! It certainly surprised and impressed me as I thought no one knew how to telegraph any more or that the line was still in place!!!
I forget the date completely but I’m guessing mid-to-late 70’s…I was hanging around the Soo Line depot in Shawano, WI, waiting to see if anything was going to go by eventually. It was summer and in those days people didn’t worry too much about teen age railfans hanging around station platforms and tracks unattended. The station windows were open and I remembered at the time wondering what sort of rattling noise it was that kept coming from the office at times. It wasn’t until much later that I wondered if it handn’t been a Morse key. If so, I doubt it was a train order, though-probably either a report or just chatter between operators.
Without going back and looking through past issues, which would be time consuming, I think the date might be in 1982 on the BN in N Dakota if I recall correct. I remember reading about that somewere but just can’t recall if it was in Trains or somewhere else. Hope perhaps this can lead you in the right direction.