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[CBQ] FW: Morse Code: A Lost Language

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Subject: [CBQ] FW: Morse Code: A Lost Language
From: Gerald Edgar <vje68@hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2010 11:28:02 -0600
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We have not discussed use of Morse Code on the Q to my recollection; anyone 
know where on the system was the last use of same?  I'm guessing it was post-BN 
as I recall a Trains article identifying an ex-GN or SOO line in No. Dakota 
still using Morse in the "80's.  When I hired on C&NW in "78 three stations 
still used Morse; consecutive stops from Marchalltown east on the 'main'.  
These were 3 senior Agt/operators who insisted the Signal gang keep their wire 
operational.  When they ret'd, that ended Morse on the Northwestern. 
9allefgedly there were some rare opccasiopns
 
I learned a semblance of American Morse as a Scout and intensive knowledge of 
International Morse while in the Air Force; those of you who are old Ham's 
learned some as well.
 
Any stories out there relating to Morse on the Q?  I have a RPPC showing a Q 
work train with one car clearly marked 'Telegraph Dept'.  Dates from 1920's.  I 
think some old equipment bklts also differentiate between Telegraph Dept and 
Signal Dept.  Also Western Union had their own work trains that traveled any & 
all RR's well into the 60's (even later?)
 
Gerald
 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 "A LOST LANGUAGE", by LeRoy Palmer. An Article appearing in the June,
1940 issue of "Railroad Magazine", pages 89-92.

As months and years drift by, the number of us old-time telegraphers
in rail service who know the train wire language is dwindling, like the "thin 
blue line" and the "thin gray line" of Civil War veterans.On
practically all the main-line dispatching circuits the telephone has
displaced the telegraph. Only the oldest ops can remember the days
when the average train dispatcher had a "copier", a fast pen operator
who wrote all orders in the order book as the dispatcher issued them
and checked as each was repeated.

In this era of telephone dispatching, the work is, of course, done
much more quickly. Orders are now repeated in one-fourth the time that
was required for even the "gilt-edge" Morse man, although the time and
all station names are spelled out, while train and engine numbers are
repeated on the telephone. The veteran brass pounder has to admit it,
even though he misses the vanishing language. Formerly I could be busy at my 
desk, or even reading the newspaper, and still hear the train wire with its 
"OS" reports of trains passing over the district, and thus I kept posted on 
everything approaching my station. Now I hear nothing unless I sit with the 
telephone receiver hung over my head. They took some of the romance and 
fascination away from railroading when they installed telephones on the train 
wire.

The twelve-hour night shift men were excellent "spotters". That is, they were 
adept at catching much-needed sleep when opportunity offered and they trained 
themselves to wake for their call. The old Morse dispatchers knew that Bill or 
Joe was "in the hay" when they got no answer on the first call and they would 
slowly repeat "RC  RC  RC DS" or  "ZA ZA ZA DS," or whatever the call was, the 
repeated chatter bringing the Op to life. This was customary and was well 
understood.

One of the first things the op learned was to arouse from deep slumber for his 
call.

I remember the first job I ever worked, night operator for the Milwaukee Road 
at Burlington, Wis., in 1901. I'd been on the job only a few nights when. One 
morning just before daylight, I got mighty sleepy and stretched out on the 
freight desk, with an "Official Guide" making a soft pillow for my head, and 
was soon sleeping soundly. I dreamed I was walking along a street, and as I 
passed a store I heard a telegraph instrument tapping out "BU BU BU BY" which 
was my office call. I thought, "Gosh! I'd better go in there and answer that. 
It's my call!" The next thing I knew, I was tumbling off that desk onto my feet 
as I realized that the Beliot dispatcher was hammering out slowly "BU BU BU BU 
DS."

I dove for the telegraph desk.

I have had this same dream, or one very much like it, many times since on 
similar occasions. Other old-time ops report having had identical experience. 
Seldom would we get deep enough in the hay to fail to recognize the familiar 
sounder call. There's not much excuse for lightening slingers to drowse on an 
eight-hour shift nowadays, but should a man working the late night, or third, 
trick in the heat of Summer, slip off to dreamland between trains, the 
telephone bell is, perhaps, not the equal of the old repeated Morse call to 
arouse him from slumber.

Perhaps you have sat in some wayside depot waiting-room and listened to the 
clatter of the instruments in the telegraph office and wished you could 
understand what was passing over the wire. But missing now from the chorus of 
clicking sounders is the loudest one of all, the sounder of the train 
dispatcher's wire. What you would hear now, if you could read them, would be 
the message wire and the commercial wire, carrying private telegrams. Gone is 
the hottest and fastest of them all, the sounder with the mysterious 
abbreviations and language of its own, which every student aspired to read. 
When a student could read the train wire his education was complete; he was a 
full-fledged op.

In 1900 I was an apprentice at the CMStP&P depot in Elkhorn, Wis. George Hayes 
was the daylight operator there. In addition to his regular duties, he had the 
job of teaching two students, Bill Jones and myself. Both of us were green farm 
hands. I don't know how dumb I was as a ham, but I do remember that Mr. Hayes 
was in despair over Bill. We both did learn, however. I became a boomer op, and 
the last I heard of Bill Jordan he was the chief dispatcher for some Western 
pike.

I was given night work with the night man, a short, fat little Irish fellow 
named Eddie uinane. Eddie was a prince. He used to send to me faithfully an 
hour or so every night when he wasn't too busy, but he was a rotten sender. The 
boys along the line had a hard time reading him. But I got accustomed to the 
funny twists he put on his Morse, and I had no trouble. Later on, when I was 
working along the line on the extra board, if some op had to copy Eddie and I 
was around he'd make me sit in and take Eddie's dots and dashes.

Meanwhile, I put in about six months with Eddie, showing up when he did at six 
p.m. and  quitting at one a.m. I was beginning to get discouraged. I could read 
words off the Western Union commercial wire pretty well, but I couldn't get 
used to those "cut" words used by the dispatchers, even though I listened 
faithfully, trying to separate the characters and make sense of them.

I'll never forget that winter night when I opened the waiting room door, 
hustled over to the huge coal stove to thaw out, and heard the big train-wire 
sounder in the office rattling away. I listened a moment, when -- just like 
that-- I could read the language! Boy, was I tickled!  What previously had been 
a jumble of sounds was now clear to me. When Eddie came in a few minutes later, 
I had the joyous news for him that I could read the train wire, and he seemed 
as pleased as I was.

After that, I was more anxious than ever to perfect myself. One day George 
Hayes said to me: "Kid, I'm going to give you a note to W.H. Melchoir, the 
chief train dispatcher at Beliot, and send you over to take your examination. 
Eddie says you have your block rules learned okay and you can read the train 
wire. They need operators and you are good enough to start out."

Next day I rode the morning local passenger train to Beliot. Mr. Melchoir 
examined me and sent me to Burlington to work that very night. There was no 
physical or standard rules examination at that time, but you had to know the 
block rules. You had to know how to ask the man east of you for a "47" before 
you let an eastbound train into the block, etc. A "block" was the stretch of 
track between your office and his, and "47" meant "Will hold all westbound 
trains until your train arrives."

Because the Morse train dispatcher had to work fast in order to keep his trains 
moving, there came into use so many abbreviations that if, as you sat in the 
wayside station waiting-room listening to the sounders, you could have to read 
every letter that was passing over the train wire, you still would have been 
unable to know what was going on, unless you understood the code. You might 
have heard the dispatcher and the op converse as follows: "Sa wn x w cmg ma hv 
9 r tm." snaps the dispatcher. {Say when extra west train is coming. I may have 
orders for them.}

"Art tnk c tr smk no," returns the op. "Es hr ty cm ty in ste nw."
{All right. I think I see their smoke now. Yes, here they come. They are in 
sight now.}

"U gt nytng r em." asks the DS. {Have you got anything for them?}

"Es abt 15 m wk," replies the operator. {Yes, about 15 minutes work.}

"OK 31 cy 3 r em & let me kw hw mch wk ty gt at DR b4 c clr em ma hv
to chg tt meet wi 42 No 7s ab 20 m1  I'll hnd hm sm ti on tm at DR."
{Okay. Make 3 copies on a 31 order for them and let me know how much
work they've got at Darienbefore you clear them. May have to change that meet 
with number 42. Number 7 is about twenty minutes late. I'll hand him some time 
on them at Darien.}

Hour after hour, with occasional periods of rest, twenty-four hours a day, the 
sounder rattled on, Few words were spelled out in train movement conversation, 
as this language -- the "cut" language of the old Morse train wire -- clicked 
over the line.

All railroad offices with telephone dispatcher's wire equipment have a
Morse circuit to fall back on in case of trouble on the phone wire. The young 
operators dread this. If they happen to be working with an old Morse 
dispatcher, they are in hot water trying to read his abbreviated instructions. 
To a veteran, however, it's the old familiar code.

Morse men admit that the telephone, like the typewriter, makes for greater 
efficiency. It standardizes operations, saves time and work, and diminishes the 
hazards of the iron trail. But we of the old school miss the romance of the 
earlier days of rugged individualism when you reached for a brass key instead 
of a black telephone receiver, and were proud of the bold, rapid, flowing 
strokes with which you wrote your train orders by hand.

And if a tobacco-chewing boomer op were suddenly yanked out of the dim past and 
put to work on a teletype machine, his consternation would be equalled only by 
his profanity. Teletypes are doing their bit to make
Morse a dead language. So far, you'll find 'em on only a few of the big roads. 
The latest pike to install this system is the Erie, which is now using teletype 
machines for their consist and passing report systems.

As every rail knows the consist of a freight train includes all of its
car numbers, listed in order, beginning at the head end. For each carload are 
shown contents, tons, destination, route (including other roads, if any such 
are needed to take the car to its destination), and sometimes the name of the 
consignee. Ventilation, refrigeration, or heating instructions are shown for 
perishable freight, and when livestock was last fed and rested.

All this information, in the case of the Erie, is transmitted by teletype to 
the company's general offices at Chicago, Cleveland, and New York, and to the 
district office at Jersey City, NJ, immediately after hotshot freights have 
left the yards. There, centralized tracking bureaus use the information to 
answer quickly all shipper and receiver inquiries about the movement of cars -- 
inquiries that in days gone by were answered with the aid of Morse conversation.

A friend on the Erie tells me that when his company adopted teletypes for its 
consist and passing report systems, last March, it converted 845 miles of 
telegraph wire to printer circuits, making a total of 2,320 miles of these 
circuits now in operation on the Erie. Of this total, he says, 2,075 miles are 
equipped with duplex apparatus over which messages or consists can be sent in 
both directions at the same time.

Morse experts concede that the telephone, the typewriter and the teletype 
seldom fail and, as I pointed out, do the work more easily and more rapidly. 
Few train dispatchers and ops would go back to the obsolete system if they 
could. But now and then you'll run across a mellow old boomer who sighs for the 
snappy Morse dialogue on the dispatcher's wire that is fast becoming a lost 
language.

                                          

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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