The Young Train Dispatcher. Burton Egbert Stevenson
sleight of hand, and had little to do with the real business of train-dispatching.
So Allan did not despair. Every evening, he and Jim laboured at their keys. First, Allan would send an item, perhaps, from the evening paper, and Jim would receive it. Then he would send it back, and Allan would write it out, as his sounder clicked along, and compare his copy with the original, to detect any errors. At first, errors were the rule; but as time went on, they became more and more infrequent; and at the end of two months, both the boys had acquired a very fair facility in sending and receiving. Indeed, one evening, after an unusually satisfactory bout, Jim was moved to a little self-approval.
“I think we’re both pretty good,” he clicked out. “Let’s apply for a job as operator.”
“Not yet,” Allan answered. “This line hasn’t done all it can for us yet.”
Nor for the road, he might have added, could he have foreseen the events of the next twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER V
“FLAG NUMBER TWO!”
The snow was falling steadily, a late spring snow, but as heavy as any of the winter. It had started in the early morning as sleet, which clung to everything it touched with a vise-like grip. Then, the wind veering to the north had turned the sleet to snow, soggy, tenacious, and swirling fast and faster, until now, as night closed in, nearly six inches had fallen.
It was a bad night for railroading, and the instruments in the office clicked incessantly as the dispatchers laboured, with tense faces, to keep their trains straight. The wires were working badly under the burden of snow and sleet; some were crossed, some were down, and the instruments slurred the dots and dashes which rattled over them in a way that brought a line of worry between the eyes of the men upon whom rested so great a responsibility.
As for the less experienced operators along the line, they were—to use the expressive phrase usually applied to them—“up in the air.” They knew that a single mistake might cost the lives of a score of people, and yet how were mistakes to be avoided when the instruments, instead of their usual clear-cut enunciation, stuttered and stammered and chattered meaninglessly. It was one of those crises which grow worse with each passing moment; when nerves, strained to snapping, finally give way; when brains, aching with anxiety, suddenly refuse to work; when, in a word, there is a break in the system to which even the smallest cog is necessary.
So it was that the trainmaster, having swallowed his supper hastily, had hurried back to the office, and stood now peering out into the night, chewing nervously the end of a cigar which he had forgotten to light, and listening to the instruments clattering wildly on the tables behind him. Although there were two of them, and their clatter never ceased, he followed without difficulty the story which each was telling, for he had risen to his present position after long years at the key.
Allan West had also hurried back to the office as soon as he had eaten his supper. It seemed to him that disaster was in the air; besides, he might be needed to carry a message, or for some other service, and he wanted to be on hand. It had been a hard day, for he had toiled back and forth across the slippery yards a score of times, but he forgot his fatigue as he sat there and listened to the crazy instruments and realized the tremendous odds against which the dispatchers were fighting.
For the trains must be moved, and as nearly on time as human effort could do it. There is no stopping a railroad because of unfavourable weather. The movement of trains ceases only when an accident breaks the road in two or wreckage blocks the track, and then only until arrangements can be made to détour them past the place where the accident has occurred. When this cannot be done, a train is run to the spot from either side, and passengers, mail, and baggage transferred.
And then the passengers get a fleeting and soon-forgotten glimpse of how the road is struggling to set things right again. For as they hurry past the place, they see a gang of men—a hundred, perhaps—toiling like the veriest galley-slaves to repair the damage; they see a huge derrick grappling with wrecked cars and engines and swinging them out of the way; they see locomotives puffing and hauling, and in command of it all, two or three haggard and dirt-begrimed men whom no one would recognize as the well-dressed and well-groomed gentlemen who fill the positions of superintendent, trainmaster, and superintendent of maintenance of way. All this the passengers pause a moment to contemplate, as one looks at a play at the theatre; then they hasten on and forget all about it. As for the labourers, they do not even raise their heads. It is no play for them, but deadly earnest. They have been toiling in just that fashion for hours and hours; they will keep doggedly at it until the road is open.
To-night a dozen passengers in the luxuriantly appointed Pullmans of the east-bound flyer were fuming and fretting because their train was ten minutes late. They complained to the conductor; they expressed their opinion of the road at length and in terms the most uncomplimentary. They vowed one and all that never again would they travel by this route. Not that the delay really made any difference to any of them; but average human nature seems to be so constituted that it is most deeply annoyed by trifles. And the conductor reassured them, talked confidently of making up the lost time, did his best to keep them cheerful and contented, joked and laughed and seemed to be thinking about anything rather than the storm which swirled and howled outside. Only for an instant, as he passed from one coach to another, and found himself alone, did the careless smile leave his lips. His face lined with anxiety as he glanced out through the door of the vestibule at the driving snow, and he shook his head. Then he resumed his jaunty air and passed on into the next coach.
Every profession has its ethics—some citadel, some point of honour, which must be defended to the death. The physician may not refuse a call for aid, may not hesitate to risk his own life in the work of saving others—that is the implied agreement he makes with humanity when he accepts his diploma. The captain may not leave his ship until the last passenger has done so; his life is negligible and worthless in comparison with that of any passenger on board; if his passengers cannot be saved, he must go down with them; to think of his own life at such a time is to confess himself a coward and a traitor to a noble calling. The conductor of a passenger-train occupies much the same position. He is responsible for his train and his passengers; never must he seem worried, or admit that there is any danger; he must front death with a smile on his lips, and when the crash comes, his first duty is to the men and women entrusted to his charge. And what a glorious commentary it is on human nature that so few, brought face to face with that duty, seek to evade it!
Back in the dispatchers’ office, the situation grew worse and worse. The dispatcher in charge of the east end had lost a freight-train. He supposed that it was somewhere between two stations, but it was long overdue, and the conviction began to be forced upon him that it had somehow got past a station unnoticed and unreported, in the snow and storm. The operator swore it hadn’t; swore that he had not slept a second; swore that he had kept a sharp lookout for the train, and hazarded the opinion that it had run off the track somewhere. The dispatcher retorted that when he wanted his opinion he would ask for it; and in the meantime that section of track was closed until the missing train could be found.
A missing train! The words send a shiver through the bravest. Somewhere, out yonder in the storm, it is careening along the rails; its crew is confident that its passage has been noted by the operator at the last station, and that the dispatcher will keep clear the track ahead. They do not suspect their peril; they do not know that another train may be speeding toward them, and that, in a few minutes, there will be a roar, a crash, the shriek of escaping steam, and then the cruel tongues of flame licking around the wrecked cars. So the fireman bends to his task, the engineer stares absently out into the night, his hand on the throttle, the front brakeman dozes upon the fireman’s box, and back in the caboose, the conductor and hind-end brakeman engage in a social game of seven-up—
In safety, this time; for the dispatcher is one who knows his business and takes no chances. Proceeding on the theory that the train has got past, he keeps the track clear and holds up the road’s traffic