My dad, a Q agent/operator, was teaching me to become a helper in '44-'45.
I got so I could send a little. The Navy interrupted my RR carreer. Later
I was in Northwood, ND on the GN in the early 60's The mayor was agent
there. I was in the depot with him, and I started to send on his key. He
was impressed, as he didn't know how to telegraph. Evidently the GN branch
up there wasn't using the telegraph then -- probably around 1962 I would
guess.
The thing that always amazed me was how fast those old telegraphers could
send and receive. They abreviated a lot, and they could send over 100 words
a minute. They could really make those sounders sing! My dad claimed he
could send as fast on the key as he could on the bug.
Dale Reeves
Dale Reeves
Original Message -----
From: <Jpslhedgpeth@aol.com>
To: <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 2:30 PM
Subject: Re: [CBQ] FW: Morse Code: A Lost Language
Gerald et al
I seem to remember that 1972 was the last year for telegraph on the Q..but I
can't point to any particular reference...IIRC the Rock Island quit the
telegraph in1965.
Coincidentally I've been reading through some of my od RR Magazines and have
recently read some of Palmer's stuff in the 1941 and 42 issues.
When I was braking on the Q 1956-58 the branch lines in Nebraska were all
telegraph and the mainlines had both telegraph and telephone communication.
All of the old head agent-operators were telegraphers..Most of those guys
were 1900-1920 seniority and used mostly the key and sounder.
Some new agents-operators were coming on and most could telegraph a bit but
didn't like to use the key in preference to the phone.
There was a young telegrapher who worked on the Lincoln-Ravenna line as an
extra operator...It was said of "Arch".. "The only thing Arch can use the
key for is to send....FN. ie...."get on the phone"
I've opined in my monthly piece in our local railfans club newsletter that
the new fad "texting" is nothing more than the old telegrapher's
"shorthand"..Those guys never used unnecesary words of letters..
In a story by Don Livingston RR October 1941...."Wt dd u sa wd be ur gess on
tt local"...Translation..."What did you say would, be your guess on that
local".
Every telegrapher had a sine by which he was known..Harry Bedwell's Eddie
Sand's was DY... Every station had a two letter telegraph call...these were
called in Employee timetables through the 1950's and maybe
later..example..at El Reno, OK on the RI....El Reno freight yard's call was
FO...the passenger depot was RN...There was an old dispatcher...and many of
them did likewise still continued to use the telegraph call on the phone...I
can still hear old Charlie Forbes..who really didn't need the
telephone...yelling into the phone..."Hello FO" when he wanted El Reno yard.
Pete
-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Edgar <vje68@hotmail.com>
To: cbq <cbq@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Nov 16, 2010 11:29 am
Subject: [CBQ] FW: Morse Code: A Lost Language
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]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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