The Providence news. (Providence [R.I.]) 1891-1906, 1896-07-06
AWAKE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.
Troubles Of tho Night Telegraph OPP
orators Signalling Trains.

orators Signalling Trains.
"when j was a young fellow was
night telegraph operator at little way
station on q railroad" said the individu-
al who works the Washington wire, as
he removed a shade from his forehead
and joined the rest of the fellows at
lunch. 81 remember that our chief am
bitiou In those days was to get as much
sleep as we could nights without being
found out, SO that we could get along
without wasting so much of the day in
bed. Pound we used to call sleep in
those days, because we stopped pound
ing brass to pound our ears on an ex-
press package pillow with waiting
room bench for bunk. Funny thing Is
trade slang. In those days there were
very few semaphore signals, and we had
to get out on the track with red and
white lanterns and swing trains up, and
our chiefest bane was holding order,
for there must be no sleep with them on
our hands.
"For instance, II westbotnd trains had
the right of way, the dispatcher might
send me an order to "Hold No. 2S for
orders" ana then run trains eastbound
against 1t all the way up to the line.
Quite a responsibility to put on IL
year-old boy. Well, IL we happened 10
be terribly sleepy it was hard fight. 1
have been 90 sleepy that i daren't sit in
my chair for fear would fall asleep, and
1 have stood up and walked around many
time for an hour or so along in the
| small hours OF the morning until the
order was revoked or the train got in.
One way we had was to put high stool
out in the center of the floor and sit on
that. IL we went to sleep we would
tumble off. i nearly broke my neck
once that way. l have often had nay call
on the wire wake me up. There's some
thing peculiar about that / have been
sound asleep in room adjoining the
telegraph office, had train go by and
an alarm clock go off without waking me
up, with two or three instruments clicking
away like mad all OF the time, and then
start up suddenly wide awake when some
one called my Office on the wire. 1t al
ways seemed to wake me up In the same
way l would dream that my station WAS
being called, and that some one was
ing 1T. l would struggle and strain to es-
cape. and tneE suddenly wake up to find
the instruments calling, just as dream
ed they were. Once when Il was very
| sound .asleep, / actually got up in my
sleep and walked across the waiting
room, to the office and had my hands
on the key to answer call before woke
up,
"This wasn't infallible, however, unf fort
unately, and we used to try all sorts of
| schemes to awaken ourselves, usually be-
ginning with an alarm clock. The trouble
with an alarm clock is tnat man gets
| accustomed to II and fails to rouse. We
| learned that the way TO use one was to
| give the alarm only one turn the first two
| or three times we tried IT., then two turns
| for awhile, and So on until 1t was fully
| wound up each time, and when 1t began
| to lose its effect, as il would, like the
| continued use OF opates, we discontinued
| for awhile, and tried something else. l
have often set my clock twenty minutes
| ahead, lay down and slept peacefully for
| that brief period.
"The greatest trouble we Cpd was In
| reporting the passing OF trains. Some OF
| the night expresses would rush by SO
quick that we wouldn't get thoroughly
| awake, and then, by and bye, after the
| train had been reported from two or three
| stations above, we would perhaps wake
| up and find the dispatcher calling. Then
| he would ask, perhaps, for No. Al, and
| we woulo answer Not yeti; there would
| be bad.few minutes in store for us, for
very severe things cSn be said over a
wire, and, they sound a thousand times
worse than face-to-face abuse.
"For awhile 1 had dog who would
begin to growl when train was a mile
away and would wake me up. but after
awhile he got afflicted in the regular way
and would only growl for a tramp. at
last devised a novel scheme. / ran a
light string across the track about five
feet from the ground, tied one end to the
fence and ran the other through the
keyhole. To this end / attached coal
hod filed with pokers, tin cans, ETC., SO
that when the train passed the string
would break and down would come the
hod with a terrible clatter and 1 would
he reused. Well, | had II all nicely fixed
for the Chicago express the first night,
when about ! O'Clock a tramp trudged
along up the track and the string caught
him Just under the nose Say, he was
the madest man l ever heard. IL hadn't
had my dog with me l don't believe he
would ever have calmed down.
"That scneme was pretty satisfactory
for quite q while, but got so that I'd
sleep through that, too, sometimes. 1t
would get caught occasionally and
wouldn't work, and IL was mean rig
gipg to- arrange, anyway, SO decided
that the safest plan was TO tic the end OF
the string TO my arm. The brst time /
tried that | was out OF cotton string, so
rummagei around in the office aud
found ball of this hard, bne twine
which the express people nse, and
stretched that, like big fool, tied one
end of IL around my wrist and laid down
on cot. In tout an hour along came
the New York limited, about tif.y miles
an hour, and ssyl-why, that twine
woul5 have towed canal boat. Before
1t broke 1: nad tipped over the cot,
dragged me halfway across the floor,
nearly frightened me to death and cut
into the flesh OF my wrist nearly to the
bore. My srm was nearly dislocated.