or across a stretch of open track with a band of men on their way to work it stands beside them in the silent desert where the only sound is the sound of their tools and their voices it walks with the man who works alone marches when thousands will work together for these are railroad people a breed of the road the men and women who run the railroad working with paper with forgers blades on presses drawing the wheels tending the signals throwing the switches ending out supplies helping with the bag serving the food selling the a typewriter making up trains running the trains maintaining the train this is my railroad one hundred thousand men and women working together to serve one purpose a railroad running in the beginning there was nothing no railroad no road bed nobody stop nothing but untouched wilderness but in the wilderness was also a promise the promise of our western empire which could make one nation as wide as a continent if it could be bound together with bands of steel were fewer men had dared to walk a path was cleared out of the rock out of the earth and through the virgin forest ties where human rail was laid hold it and spike down when the last spike was driven our first trains moved across the continent up an over seven thousand feet a mountain barrier locked in winter's pudge's and into the heart of the western  a nation that was joined together a nation's scarcely born yet reaching for its destiny as the west and southwest grew so did the railroad until today those rails which once bravely spanned the mountains have become an interlocking network binding together in the far west the southwest and the south linking them in turn with the mid continent and through many connecting lines telling traffic across the harling the products of the factories fashioned into the shape of things our people in the following the people of a free nation of people free to move and travel at their will without answering to any man this is my railroad a service performed by a hundred thousand men and women who share a common pride knowing how to run a ngs quite a job and it seems to be getting bigger all the time all along our lines we keep getting more people don't ask me where they come from but they keep right on coming and behind those people we keep getting more business and industry each day in the last twenty five years a new industry large enough to need a rail connection has sprung up along our line since the end of world war two that rate has dropped to new industries and turning out goods that have to be delivered to somebody somewhere all over the country so it's no wonder we can ever say a railroad is really built for always adding to the always rebuilding for instance as traffic increases we keep playing bigger and heavier rail to carry the heavier lo replacing rail isn't it a job till you remember you can't hold up traffic our boys work it out the all the fellows down the line pass the word along in the drains coming the speed at which we can run our trains depends only partly on the power of the locomotive it depends even more on the weight of the rails and the curves ingredients of the track we always try for a straight and level  line but the contours aren't always made to order we have to fit our railroad to the contour so when we have to build a curve we try to make it as gentle  one stretch of track that the had to be loose it wasn't quite so easy we had to swing our curve all the way around so one end of the train actually passes over the other we have to carry where a cut would be too deep we drive a tunnel through we're a fool would be too great we built a trestle are by and to carry our trains on stilts in order to cut across the great salt lake we had to build a truss all twelve miles long as we put a roof right across the water and we engineer our bridges sometimes we build a small  sometimes we build a highway like the pinkos river bridge in texas there are more than ten thousand bridges bio ducts and trestles on our lines it's a lot of work to build a and the work is never done what you build you have to maintain maintaining a railroad takes a lot of material our supply trains are always on the news carrying that material to every point in the system it takes a lot of equipment and some of it very technical like a real detector car which can see right inside the steel rails looking for flaws no human eye could ever see but mostly maintaining a railroad takes a lot of men and those men have to know their jobs when the weather is fine and the sun is out that isn't too difficult when the weather changes the job gets a little more complicated trains so our men must fight it this is no easy way to make a living but railroad men can take it working as steadily as the wind itself for as long as the wind keeps blowing who are these people who run the railroad who keep the railroad running we're a plain and friendly people living in the cities towns and rural districts of eight states living among our friends and neighbors whose patronage of the railroad gives us the work by which we earn our living we in turn contribute to the communities in which we live we pay our taxes take an active part in community life and buy from merchants up and down the streets about five thousand pounds we are members of clubs women's clubs and service clubs and members of sports clubs to both us players and the spectators we all have fun don't we but yes we are a plane unfriendly people we who run the railroad we who run the railroad in sun and storm in summer and winter in order to carry the people in the products of a nation so that one man may exchange his goods with other man and i in turn with him in the working pattern of a free economy we haul a lot of stuff right but getting it in the right place at the right time and doesn't just a matter of looking a lot of cars together and running them over the line every train has to be made up according to a carefully worked out plan so naturally we think our end of the job in the railroad yards is an important part of railroading because that's where the trains are put together all along the line the cars come into the yard to be routed and rerouted to their destination in the yards we sort them and shuffle the individual cars in the new train some will go unarmed either south or east or west in the most modern yards it works like this the engineer the sweatshirt and pushes the cars up the slope of the manmade little hill we call the an electronic squeeze to slow it down it's still a little too fast so another controller set and a second set of squeezers brings it down to proper speed not the operator in the next tard takes over and sends it to the right track to join up with other cars slated for the same destination that has to be handled just right maybe there's furniture in that car or maybe a lot of dishes if it rolls down the hump too fast it'll hit like a head on coll it's got to come in real easy right to the cup like a cushion that's what you might call a push button railroad but it still takes a good man to run it and a good team on the ground to back him up where one man's job ends another man's takes over as the newly made up trains pulled along the protractor the departure yard a yard clerk calls in the number of each car to the yard office s we know where any shipment is anywhere along our lines at any time on automatic machines we can a card for every car in every trade the cards are routed through other machines that automatically cut teletype tapes and a special copy of each card to as many as sixty different offices which may be interested in the praise later a junction points across the continent the progress of each car will again be teletype ahead with the aid of automatic equipment and electronics railroading today has become a sign that all of these mechanical marvels can really accomplish is to help good men do their jobs better the engineer in the cab can pick up his phone and thanks to shortwave radio talk with the conductor in the caboose a mile away easily as if they were sitting side by side the conductor works from the reports which once made up by hand are now made up by machines but no machine yet devised has been able to cut off a car on its destination or switch it to the proper track no machine yet devised has ever taken the place of the brakeman's eyes as he keeps his watch over the rolling wheels of the lowly freight and no machine ever devised has taken the place of the engineer skill a pilot sees train along the track the machines help but it still takes men to do the job the engineer high balling along the top allowable speed knows there are trains ahead of him behind him and coming in the opposite direction yet he is completely confident his confidence is in the manual keeping posted the dispatchers on a hundred miles of  singletrack there may be as many as twenty trains travelling in two directions on a different speeds as trains pass the station the operator passes the word to the dispatcher he checks one report against the other and transmits his orders on ahead to be picked up along the line the engineer or fireman in the engine cab picks up the orders from the top arm of the train order post and a mile behind a train and latches onto a duplicate from the lower arm the orders may read for the train to go right on through or to pull into a siding so another train can pass it's teamwork all the way good coordination and timing and the automatic lock signal system provides a safe double check on the busier sections of single track line dispatchers can speed up the traffic flow with the aid of an electronic system called centralized traffic control or c t c c t c is the green of almost every boy and man a railroad at your fingertips one hundred miles of track before your eyes out on the line to freight trains push on toward each other on the same track to the dispatcher miles away they are light journeys c t c board lights moving toward a siding then a flick of a remote control switch with a positive control of c t c the dispatcher's judgment cuts down delays at sightings and often he can time his mates so perfectly that neither train must stop