The Evolution of Rules 1, 2, 3 and Times

Traditionally, having the correct time out on the road meant that you would avoid a faceful of freight train.

Consider the march of technology. A local newspaper columnist once wrote about the traffic radar equipment being introduced in the City of Kingston. In the past, a speeder could reportedly beat a speeding ticket if it could be demonstrated in court that the police officer had not calibrated the radar set with the supplied tuning fork before beginning work that day.

'Forget it. They use this new radar to calibrate the tuning forks.'

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It seems that the railway rule books are usually a couple of decades out of date with cutting-edge reality. Historically, railways were often profitable and safe because of their tendency to be conservative. 

This online portion of the CROR (2015) currently (2021) states:

Every conductor, assistant conductor, locomotive engineer, pilot, foreman, snow plow foreman and such other employees as the company may direct, shall, when on duty, use a reliable watch that indicates hours, minutes and seconds and shall;

(i) be responsible to ensure that it is kept in proper working condition so that it does not reflect a variation of more than 30 seconds in a 24 hour period;

(ii) set it to reflect the correct time if it reflects a variation of more than 30 seconds;

(iii) before commencing work, compare the time on their watch with a railway approved time source. Where a railway approved time source is not accessible, obtain the correct time from the RTC or by comparing with another employee who has obtained the correct time. Every crew member assigned to train, transfer or yard service shall compare the time with one another as soon as possible after commencing work.

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While every employee is held individually responsible for always having the correct time, one wonders if the prescribed personal timepiece is actually the least reliable source of railway time within a fusee's throw of the locomotive - given all the GPSed electronic telemetric gadgetry therein.

By the same token, employees flagging the headend of a steam-powered train (with the fire therein always threatening to melt the steel around it), ironically, were required to have matches.

Obviously, when one is 'all alone' out in a snowstorm, one must know the correct time, or be able to light a kerosene flagging lantern without using the locomotive's resources. You are individually responsible. You and your crew will also be held collectively responsible. 

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I am interested in the concept of time(s). Like many of you, I also enjoy reading old rulebooks and timetables as they allow me to imagine other (probably idealized) periods in railway history. Very small settlements like Schreiber, Ontario once had prosperous watchmaker shops to supply, and to regularly inspect and regulate, the timepieces of all the local running trades personnel and other employees affected by the rules. 

... So what could be better than a 'history book' of the time rules which was designed to provide the 'bureaucratic memory' to the AAR and its members?

This little old book is about 4 inches x 6 inches x 1.6 inches thick and does not like to be scanned.

... pardon my gutters.

[above: not exceed 30 seconds per week - not merely 30 seconds in 24 hours cf 2015 CROR]

The 'current rules' (1940) and Page 20 (referred to above) follow ...

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Moving on from rule book time, to time(s) ...

One period of railway history which I find particularly interesting is the nightmare period before railways and railroads began to standardize their individual or collective times ... and before national time zones were established across continents. 

... Solar time was 'our city's time' or 'God's time' ... and it stood preeminent. If you had an actual appointment (rather than a simple 'walk-in and wait'), the city's chiming clock towers could guide your temporal journey to the public building or private office ... where you'd find the affluent professionals, their fancy clocks and watches, and their 'time is money' ethic. 

... Church bells and other calls to worship were also intended to regulate people's temporal journeys back then ... but I digress.

Consider the march of technology. Society required more and more people to be able to tell time from a 12-hour clock face. People became more educated and affluent. People travelled longer distances away from their homes via faster and faster railway networks. 

... People began to notice that their personal timepieces were matching neither the position of the sun, nor the carefully-kept local solar time at the settlements where they detrained ...

And don't even get Sandford Fleming started on railways using only a 12 hour clock!

Did you spot the 5 Canadian cities?

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To travel farther through the looking glass of North American railways during the era of local solar time, up trains, down trains, noon guns, and time balls ... perhaps try this earlier post ...

Canadian Railways - Public Timetables from 1874

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from: GWR Company Servants: Janet KL Russell; 1983; Wild Swan Publications.

Finally, on the Great Western Railway (UK), here is an undated view of a watchmaker within its little shop of horologists. With all the mechanical time-keeping machines located throughout the GWR's dense little railway system, it made sense to have a centralized staff of experts to repair and oversee their use.

Postwar Problems - Locomotives and Cars - Karl Fritjof Nystrom in 1946.

This seemed like an interesting article to post ... from an old BLF&E magazine of 1946.

Predicting the future is something humans seem compelled to do. As we consider present day forecasts, it can be helpful (sometimes even comforting) to look to the past to see which unforeseen events, social trends, inventions and general phenomena have impaired humans' clairvoyance in the past.

For specialists in the railway arts and sciences, these 'future of railroading' articles are interesting to consider ...

• Some predictions come to pass, some do not. 
• What in the author's background caused them to see the future this way?
• In the years that followed, what unexpected events or conditions changed this vision of the future?

The locomotive photos below are located in the same place they appear in the article - I have tried to draw out a little more detail in the photos so they appear as separate images.

If you tipped your head to the left to read the mailing label ...
I think the recipient probably worked out of Lambton Yard on the CPR.
As Rolly Martin transferred there for a short while, early in his career,
he might have crossed paths with Mr Fox.

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Here is the obituary from the Milwaukee Sentinel June 6, 1961 for Karl F Nystrom.

from: Milwaukee Sentinel June 6, 1961, Google Newspapers.

One of Nystrom's many patents ...

The Nystrom Truck
(from patents.google.com)

For (1) above ...  modern samples of AAR Letter Ballots.

The article concludes ... and some advertisements (How did the advertisers see 'the future'?)

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Hiawatha Equipment

from: The Golden Age of the Passenger Train; CJ Riley; 1997; MetroBooks.

A streamlined Hudson leading a Hiawatha consist - all styled by Otto Kuhler (1894-1976),
using design specifications of the American Locomotive Company
and Milwaukee Road's chief mechanical officer Karl Nystrom.

This train provided speed topping 100mph between Chicago and Milwaukee.
The Hudsons entered service in 1939.

from: The Golden Age of the Passenger Train; CJ Riley; 1997; MetroBooks.

The Beaver Tail observation car.

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The Olympian Hiawatha

Chicago to Seattle-Tacoma.
Equipment from 1947.

from: Trains; June 1949; Kalmbach.

Train No 16 east of Black River, Washington.
Starting from the left: 2 tracks Northern Pacific, 2 tracks Milwaukee, distant track is Union Pacific.

from: Trains; June 1949; Kalmbach.

Sky-top lounge-sleeper on the tail end of the Olympian Hiawatha.

BLE 1911 The Standard Code

What would happen if commercial airlines flew around the skies with each using its own rules? 

In the early days of the industry, that's exactly what they would have done.

This post will look at a letter sent to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Journal in April 1911, regarding the risks of not using a 'standard code'. The letter is by WH Morris of Division 236. Today Division 236 is based in Vancouver, Washington.

The Era in History

This first image was taken within a decade of the letter, showing motive power built at about that time.

from: The Northern Pacific, Main Street of the Northwest; Charles R Wood; 1968; Superior Publishing.

Engineer Walt Stevens and fireman AC Larson in Northern Pacific Mikado 1693, built in 1910.
Each is posing with a hand on a control. The photo was probably taken with flash powder.

This is a letter which was written by an engineer probably working for a subsidiary of the Union Pacific. He is spending a good part of his time running on Northern Pacific rails .

I can give you a few contemporary illustrations of the work, using Northern Pacific equipment on that same line from that same time. So that is what you will see.

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The Letter

All of the railroads mentioned above are listed in the Statistics of Railways in the United States; 1909; Interstate Commerce Commission. The shortest is 57 miles long. The Oregon-Washington is a Union Pacific subsidiary. The trackage described is shown in public timetables as part of the UP's main routes - although much of it is actually Northern Pacific track. Maps and timetables follow ...

This is a professional journal which often hashes out questions and problems with operating rules. The 'Train Rules - Standard Code' column follows the letter.

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The Territory Described

The map below (from 1928) shows the section of track described between Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. This map seems to support the idea that the Great Northern, Union Pacific and Northern Pacific all operated trains over the same section of the latter's main line.

from: 1928 Handy Railroad Atlas of the United States; Rand McNally - Kalmbach reprint.

Looking at the Northern Pacific (1911) and Union Pacific (1910) public timetables which follow, you'll see many of the same station names used. You'll also notice that the passenger trains used the same series of numbers - 3xx. The train numbers dovetail with no duplication between the railroads.

It seems likely that the Northern Pacific employee timetable would display these trains side by side.

Northern Pacific Railway 1911 public timetable on archive.org

Union Pacific public timetable 1910 on archive.org

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from: The Northern Pacific, Main Street of the Northwest; Charles R Wood; 1968; Superior Publishing.

The photo above shows a Northern Pacific freight crew at the beginning or end of the day at Auburn, Washington in 1912. There are many details to enjoy, but notice the backup whistle on the caboose's rear platform.

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The Standard Code

The Standard Code of The Association of American Railroads of 1940 is a four inch by six inch book which is almost two inches thick. It includes the progression of operating, block signal and interlocking rules put forward by committees of the Association between 1889 and 1938. The oldest version of any given rule ... is following by its next version ... and finally ending with the current version.

I could never imagine myself out flagging as a new brakeman, on multi-track territory at night, and correctly identifying when I, myself am getting whistled back ... it's the stuff of nightmares ... so let's look at the whistle signals on the page at the right instead ...

You can see that the Standard Code of 1940 includes the whistle signals used in 1906. Most people would recognize the 14 (l) whistle signal used at public grade crossings. Notice that it ends with a short sound in this version of the rules.

On the next pages comes the 1915 version of the whistle signals and our 14(l) is still the same. 

The letter from Brother Morris to the BLE also raises the lack of consistency regarding the rules for the use of torpedoes. (A 'torpedo' was an 'explosive charge' - long before it was an explosive charge propelled under water at an enemy ship.)

Starting with Rule 15 of 1887, above, and continuing on the pages below, you can see that the use of torpedoes gave them a lot of work ... After trying one procedure, there were problems or accidents and this caused a review of the process to try to improve it. 

In 1928, they decided to avoid placing torpedoes where the general public was nearby. While this may have been to prevent tampering with life-saving warnings ... you can imagine it may also have been because of injuries sustained by bystanders which caused this rule to be modified. 

Bell cord signals! Before radios, a dedicated air pressure line was used by the passenger train conductor to signal the engine. Before this air line, there was the bell cord. 

The bell cord was strung on the outside of the full length of the passenger train. Pulling on the cord was supposed to ring a bell in the engine cab. Keep in mind that compressed air on a train didn't become common before the air brake was widely in use. 

In February 1874, a passenger train westbound from London, Ontario caught fire ... and because the bell cord had not been connected (for practical reasons) ... the train couldn't be stopped immediately, and ten people burned to death or died later of their injuries. As usual, there were many other contributing factors - movable kerosene lighting inside wooden coaches, just as one example.

Again, you can see how the rule evolved over successive reviews by the successive committees.

To sum up: Brother Morris had a good point that problems are created when crews are forced to operate over territories such as his where there is such a diversity of rules to cover the same general process. There was good justification for a 'Standard Code' and for railroads to adopt approved, standardized rules. 

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from: The Northern Pacific, Main Street of the Northwest; Charles R Wood; 1968; Superior Publishing.

In 1912, at Yakima, Washington (shown at the east side of the map above) an eastbound NP passenger train has overtaken an eastbound freight. Most of the splintered wood you see was the caboose. We can probably think of ten possible rules violations which may have caused this problem, including some not involving anyone on these trains.

As humans will always make mistakes and will always forget things from time to time, it is a good idea to eliminate unnecessary confusion by making necessary rules simpler.

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From the same edition of the Journal (some bound sets of these can also be seen on archive.org) comes a letter about efforts to change a railroad practice which increased the probability of crews making mistakes and forgetting things ... long hours and inadequate rest.

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Canadian Content

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Finally ...
Making Money from Endorsements and Advertising