Arizona republican., 1900-09-10
MEN WHO CONTROL TRAINS
Dispatchers Are Perfect Autocrats Tn
 the Towers.

The duties of the railway train dis patcher these days are not what they were before the block system was in troduced and when railway meant q single track, with stations and inter mediate side tracks. The dispatcher has to be just as vigilant now as then, but the running of trains has been so systematized in recent years that in cidents" to make a dispatcher's hair turn gray or stand on end are few and far between nowadays Few people know what an important and maybe autocratic parsonage a railway train dispatcher is. No enc from president down to track walker has the right 10 enter his office and give him orders. The time schedule of the several trains IS his supreme authority, and if the president or any other official wishes to change the running time of a train he must indicate such a change on the schedule. And not only that. but sim ultaneous with any change the time card in effect must be abrogated.
 The dispatcher sits in his office eight hours, three of them being necessary to round out the twenty-four hours. and while he is at his. table he is sup posed to live the life of a hermit. That is. he will permit. no one to converse with him, though. of course, the gen eraI manager may venture to ask him a question concerning things down the road The dispatcher has before him while on duty a long strip of paper on which he indicates in ink the time of the arrival and departure of all trains at all stations. This makes his orfiCinl report of his eight hours of duty. but in fact when he sits down to the tele- graph key the road and all it's stations and intermediate "turn-outs" are a mental picture. and it is his minds eve that locates all trains at every minuta. In other words, the road is a mental panorama and the trains fly up and down 1t, passing, waiting or following. as the case may be. If one O? moro trains are delayed or for some reason nave to take another schedule the dis patcher adjusts their running t. those on schedule time. For this reason if would be impossible to have any kind ot a collision if his orders were nbeycd. and it is because his orders are not strictly obeyed that collisions s.rlG- tires occur.
 In the early days of railroading. when all trains used the same track. the train dispatcher's office had rec ords of more hairbYeadth cscare3 of trains and passengers than tha public had any idea of. In thosa days Gisci- pine was not what it Is now, nor d1 engineers try these days to nave their trans pass at full speed on the sama track But now that double tracks and block signals have reduced the danger or collisions. if not eliminated it alto S'ther from train movements. stories ot narrow escapes of the long ago are not likely to disturb ;he most rimid If Is that which happens that h1rrifies people but it Is those things in oper- aIlhE railway trains which come "w;th- in an ace" of happening that make tho train dispatchcr's hair turn gray in il minute. for, strange as it may 3ef.m what are called ''providentiaI escap,s'' nearly always happen to trains that are crowded and damned with pecple and the escape at q place on Inc road where an accident would have clused the death of every one on the trait. ar trains.
 An old train dispatcher on a Chicaeo road tells of one of the "provideutial escapes" It was many years ago,