Todays class 1 dispatchers sit in big computer terminal saturated rooms, recieving and sending wireless data transfer watching flatscreen video screens ,showing the routes, train movements and turnouts and make decisions affecting efficient train movement and have peoples lives in their hands.
Not sure how the “Old School”, (there’s that terrible word again) authorities accomplished the same tasks. Was it “Radio”? Was it isolated towers along the track routes? Was it automatic electric signals? Just how did the old guys control the movement of many trains along the mainline, interchanges and yards, and also where one class 1 crossed another class 1.
Could some experienced prototype train employees, active or retired, please describe the activities and responsibilities of Dispatchers and related jobs in Real train operation in the old days and even today?
Also Yardmasters or any other jobs / positions of authority in prototype control of train movements.
I will split “old” and “new” at about 1985 because that’s when the rules changed and TT&TO essentially died out on the vast majority of railroads.
There was a big difference between TT&TO and the modern systems. In TT&TO the trains started with ALL the authority they need to make the complete trip of the train on that crew district. If the dispatcher never communicated with them again, the train would (barring something having a serious accident) make it all the way to the other end of the subdivision. The dispatcher would modify that authority, adding, deleting or changing how the train proceeded against other trains hand when it could proceed. But in all cases the train had authority to proceed after the individual meet or wait was accomplished.
In the modern systems the authority is granted incrementally. A train is rarely given authority across its entire run all at once. In CTC its only extends as far as the signals are lined, in track warrants only to the end of its warrant, in DTC only in the blocks granted. Ironically the real railroads operate much more like a typical model railroad. when I first heard DTC being used it sounded like an old DC/rotary switch layout being dispatched.
In all cases except a manual interlocking, the dispatcher/control operator is doing things remotely regardless of era. The dispatcher has no idea whether the system is using wires, fiber optics, microwaves or radio to communicate with the trains. Once the dispatcher is no longer sitting next to the tracks and operating “by wire” it really is immaterial how long the wires are.
A key difference is the amount of information a dispatcher has. In the old days the dispatcher rarely talked to the crews. Trains didn’t have radios so the only communication was through the operators and there were opertors only every 10-20 miles in the pre-1950’s and 20-50 miles in the 1970-1980&
“Back in the day”, Dispatchers communicated by telegraph and/or railroad telephone system to Operators at the train order offices along the railroad. To authorize and control movements on the main tracks, the Dispatcher would literally dictate clearances and train orders to the Operators at particular points. The Operators would write down the clearances and train orders on paper forms and physically deliver those forms to train crews. A clearance needed to be issued to a train at its initial terminal, possibly along with train orders. But only if the train’s authority needed to be modified before reaching its final terminal did the Dispatcher need to communicate with a train en route.
Crossings of railroads at grade were handled (whether of the same company or of different railroads) as circumstances required. The employee timetable could provide instructions as to how to proceed, or a stop sign on a swinging arm might be employed. A train order office (located in a depot or tower) might be used, with an Operator responsible for setting train order signals and issuing written orders to trains on both of the intersecting lines. The most sophisticated way of handling intersecting railroad lines was through an interlocking plant that set signals and lined switches to prevent conflicting movements.
At large yards, a variety of systems were employed to control movements within the yard. Those systems varied from railroad to railroad, and from place to place on any given railroad, and changed over time. An employee timetable may provide Special Instructions that govern the authority of a yardmaster or stationmaster at a particular place.
Interchanges used to be in most places where railroads crossed and many of them were smaller cuts. I model a branch of the Reading (technically the Philadelphia and Reading since my era is 1900-1905) and in the 72 miles of the branch there are 6 interchanges with the PRR and one with the B&O (I model the B&O and hope to have 4 of the PRR interchanges on my new layout). The difference now is tha there are fewer railroads so fewer interchanges (for example in Kansas City, the UP, MKT, MP, and CNW are now all one road,and the MILW and CRIP are bankrupt). More of the interchange is done with run through type trains rather than yard to yard interchange. The little interchange track at the junction is much rarer because rairloads have found it much more efficient to interchange larger cuts at fewer places. It allows cars to enter the other road’s flows more quickly.
Crossings are the same except there are more automatic interlockings and fewer crossings, as various lines have been abandoned or truncated. Something that suprises a lot of modelers is that in some cases automatic interlockings may not even show up on a dispatcher’s board (other than a track occupancy in a block). A dispatcher can’t do anything at an automatic interlocking, so he needs no controls.
Ha, I never even thought about it that way - but you’re right, the modern way is like using DC block control - set certain blocks to a given train is exactly like giving them authority to run over that section of railroad. and no furhter. Stop at the limits, request authorization to run over the next section of the railroad. We could go back to the model ‘dispatcher’ being more of a power director, assigning cabs to blocks for engineers operating out of the elevated cabs of yore. We’ve come full circle.
I have a Dispatcher Sheet from the NYO&W (went out of business in 1957). The sheet of paper is 6 feet long. It has every station on every division and branch. There are probably 2 dozen columns for eastbound trains and the same for westbound trains. At the top of each column was a train designation with engine number. When a train passed a station or other operator’s facility, the operator would phone or radio the dispatcher, who would then mark on the sheet the time the train passed the reporting point and at what time. The sheet went up on the dispatcher’s office wall at 12:01am every day and came off the dispatcher’s office wall at 11:59pm. The marked sheet gave a visual indication of where every train was and at what time as it travelled along. The sheet was then filed away in a filing cabinet. No computers, no GPS, and unless the file cabinet was in a fire or flood, a permanent record was had.
Present-day dispatchers have much more timely and accurate information about the trains in their territory - which train, exactly where, what cargo, hazmat, and possibly even the names of the conductor and engineer.
Pre-CTC the dispatcher had the train number, the locomotive number and, after delay for transmission (by railroad telegraph code,) the station or reporting location it passed five minutes ago. He would know the lading of those trains with hot cargoes - silk, perishibles and marketing department special interest items. He managed by exception, issuing changes to authority granted (in the employee timetable) by train class and direction. Extras had to be threaded through scheduled traffic, and most of them probably spent a lot of time waiting on sidings for regular trains to clear.
The one thing that hasn’t changed is that the DS has to be able to anticipate where things will be an hour or two from now, and to be ready to change plans on the fly in case of unexpected development. Mother Nature (red of tooth and claw) and her son-in-law, Murphy, are always ready and willing, and frequently able, to throw mud all over the beautiful plans. That’s when a good DS is worth his weight in flawless diamonds.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - where the timetable was Holy Writ)
Threading the extras through the regular trains was no problem, they did that themselves unless the regular trains were late, the big chore was threading opposing extra trains against each other, that was all the dispatcher’s responsibility.
A good dispatcher is working 4-6 hours in advance, the Asst. Chief, his boss, is working 6-24 hours out. One might think dispatchers can change things “on the fly” but the reality is that to make a substantive change requires hours, because there is such a long lead time to get things cranked up. That’s one thing modelers have problems understanding. They like to throw in an extra or a second session to “suprise” the dispatcher. That’s not really the way things worked or work now. It takes hours to get the power ready, it takes hours to build, set, and get an air test on a train, It takes at least one to three hours to “call” a crew, that is get a crew on duty. In the old days work crews operated on general line-ups, which were issued every 3 to 4 hours, once a lineup was issued the dispatcher wasn’t going to jump up and run a “suprise” extra train until the next line-up is issued. The suprise extra can’t leave until all the opposing extras have something on the extra train, which could take hours to get copied and delivered.
Dave,Here’s one for you…How about ringing up a tower operator to get permission to enter the main line?
I’ve done that several times working as a head brakeman on the PRR as late as 1968.
On the Chessie while coming out of a mine branch to return to our train(we took the needed cars and left the rest of our train on a passing siding) we would need to radio the DS to get permission to re-enter the main line.Some times he would line us up other times we faced a red signal.
I do know a DS has to be flexible enough to change things on the fly because things can and will go South in a heart beat.
If (say) Q281 goes into emergency he knows to run Q 008 around that stop Q281 if he has double track to work with.No need to tie up the division by parking trains behind Q281 until the problem is solved.If that section is single track his day just went down the tubes from the logjam of trains.If the crew of Q008 is running short he will run QOO8 around Q281.Then how about opening a window for MOW between trains? Then there’s those pesty hyrailers that needs track time.
Nothing is cut and dry on the railroad since there is too many variables that can come into play.
That’s not really “a change on the fly” or a 'suprise". You were on duty and on a branch so the dispatcher knew you were there and knew you were coming out, not to mention you had part of your train in a siding. The dispatcher was expecting you, now exactly when may not have been known but that you were coming out was something know from the moment you entered the branch.
Oh sure things change and things go wrong but they quickly have an impact that can last hours and extend for miles. For example if one route in Wyoming experiences a derailment or incident, within an hour trains could be laid down as far away as St Louis. So bad things can happen in an instant but the reprecussions and reverberations last for a long time.
If the train goes in emergency on double track, in order to single track around them you have to issue train orders to the trains to operate against the current of traffic. If you don’t have tower operators or open train order offices, the
There are some problems that happen right now that have to be dealt with in real time. Landslides, flash floods or some (fillintheblank) driving a double bottom into the broads side of a train that was already crossing the road require action to be taken immediately. Granted the action may be slow to develop and take a long time to get things back to normal, but the initial orders have to be issued fast - and they had better be right.
The military has contingency plans to deal with all sorts of unlikely occurrences. I hope that the railroads are equally well prepared. (But I can’t help wondering if they had planned for the impact the Mount Pinatubo eruption had on Clark AB…)
Dave,I’m not going to be drawn into a useless discussion with you…I know what I know through my own railroading experience and talking to retired railroaders including a former CR dispatcher…
Nothing is as smooth as you claim not even the overly strong coffee from the coffee pot.
Well of course there are problems that pop up, things break, ca-ca occurs.
The point is that trains don’t just materialize out of thin air and want to run across the railroad. It takes hours to get a train ready and lots of resources. A problem on the railroad is like dropping a rock in a pond, yes there is a splash where the rock hits but the ripples radiate out long after the splash is gone. If you want to say dispatchers plan on the fly you are looking at just the splash, after working in and around dispatch offices for over 20 years, trust me, the dispatchers have to deal with the ripples too.
Conductors have to deal with sleepers too, but that doesn’t mean they don’t mark up a switch list.
That’s why its important to have the DS line up of trains so,you has a conductor won’t be taken by surprise when a train shows up in your work area.
There is always trains being ran on and entering the division from secondary main lines as you should know-unless you work on a regional where one or two or three trains are ran in 24 hours.
NS runs 40 trains a day on the Sandusky line here in Bucyrus.There is always train movements,a hyrailer wanting track time or MOW window is needed.It can be hectic since there is a single track bottleneck between Harvey and Chatfield with one passing siding…
I think the FRA outlawed the use of line ups for MOW back in the late 1990s. Not that they can’t give an informal, informational line up to MOW or trains on who they’re waiting on.
I always tell my conductors that when the dispatcher says we are waiting on one, he dosen’t mean the first one. He means the last one.[(-D]
CTC only dates from the 1920’s or 1930’s. It has only within the last several decades become the most common form of authority on main routes.
Radio only dates from the 1950’s and 1960’s as a common way to communicate with trains. Before that, from about post WW1 there was a dispatcher’s telephone line along the right of way with phone booths/boxes at many sidings or in depots. Or they had company phone systems where the phone in the box/booth connected to a railroad office (yardmaster, tower operator, train order operator, agent) so a train could communicate with somebody.
The further back you go, the less reliable and less information could be communicated efficiently. A 1930’s era rule book has pages of rules on what to do in the case of “wire failure”, where communication is broken, while a modern rule book has virtually none of that verbiage.
With poorer communication it was more important to make the people on the railroad “semi-autonomous”, where they could, given some instructions, navigate their way across the railroad. A railroad could operate the scheduled trains with minimal if any additonal communication, with the train crews and train dispatchers never actually talking to each other. Everything was done by written instruction (clearances, train orders, timetable schedules, messages) or through a third party (operators, levermen, agents, yardmasters).
A dispatcher could write the following train orders:
And to some extent, the changing to a system where the dispatcher has all the control over where trains meet or pass (a crew doesn’t have to figure if they have enough time to go to the next siding to clear a superior train) has made it possible to take someone off the street and promote them to be a full fledged conductor in six months instead of six years.