The American railway; its construction, development, management, and appliances (1889) (14757952841)

Caption: "The General Despatcher."
Identifier: americanrailwayi00cool (find matches)
Title: The American railway; its construction, development, management, and appliances
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Cooley, Thomas McIntyre, 1824-1898 Clarke, Thomas Curtis, 1827-1901
Subjects: Railroads Railroads
Publisher: New York : C. Scribner's sons
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Internet Archive



Text Appearing Before Image:
staken to insure that such orders are received and correctly under-stood. As there are great advantages following uniformity ofusages and rules among connecting roads, after years of conference,in conventions and by committees, approved forms of all runningrules and signals have recently been adopted and are now in verygeneral use over the United States. Yet, in spite of all possibleprecautions, accidents will sometimes happen. Richard GrantWhite gave a name to a mental habit which, in train-despatch-ers, has caused many fatal accidents. It is heterophemy, orthinking one thing while saying, hearing, or reading another. Acase within my knowledge, which cost a dozen lives, was as fol-lows : Two opposing trains were out of time, and the train-de-spatcher wished to have them meet and pass at a certain stationwe will call I, as Nos. i and 2 are represented as doing on thediagram (see diagram of schedule board, p. 161). So he tele-graphed the following message, to be delivered to No. i at H
Text Appearing After Image:
The General Despatcher. A CURIOUS ACCIDENT. 167 and to No. 2 at J : Nos. i and 2 will meet at I. This mes-sage was correctly received at J and delivered to No. 2. But at H the operator had just sold a passenger a ticket to K, and,