Bisbee daily review., 1907-05-11
7OO RULES FOR ... THE ENGINEERS
In a Run of l25 Miles He Must Exhibit a Most Remarkable
 Memory Every Minute.

How many ironclad rules can tne human mind keep within instant re- call if death is the penalty for for getting?
 The answer to this is supposed to be somewhere in the code of rules and signals which the railway officials have devised for the operation of the fast trains between New York and Chicago. These rules, of which there are about zoo for each 125 miles be tween the two cities, were made for the safety of the public. but the public may well look askance when it learns that one man must remember TOO of them, and that slip of any one rule may mean a shocking loss of human life.
 These TOO rules are the average for each division of the chief railroad lines running west rom New York Each set covers the work of one en- gineer who drives his train until an- other engineer, with a fresh set Of rules, and presumably a fresa memory relieves him. In other words, eight men, the average number of. locomo- i've engineers who drive a fast train between New York and Chicago, must keep constantly in mind nearly coco different rules. fin order that pat rOns of these trains may travel with out risking their lives. What this means to the pubic, in twenty-four hours ride on one or these trains, can be judge from the following list of what an engineer on certain 100 mile run has to watch while his locomotive Is going sixty miles an hour:
 Five hundred "cross-overs" switch 1 lights, to learn whether they are red or white: fifteen "interlocking'' switch lights, to learn whether are | red. white or green; seven "non-inter- !! locking switch lights, to know whether they are red or green; sema- { phOre arms at twenty-fiv way stations i for possible red light 400 hignway crossings 10 know whether they are clear" locomotives of a dozen ! trains approaching on parallel tracks, i for red or white lights; telegraph op- orators at twenty-five stations, wno 1 may be waiting near the track with ] c"deTs: for a red flag at any conceiv- able point in the iOJ miles, displayed as a danger signal; whether one or | two torpedoes are exploded at any ! point i'll the 100 miles, s.gnifying eau tiOn or step; whether his clearance card is good for each of twenty-five way stations; whether there is enough water In the engine tender; whether there is enough coal in the engine
 tender; whether the steam pressure is being kept up; whether the fireman i is obeying another long set of rules; whether the engine tell rings at 4O0 , highway crossings. . -- 1 B! day the switch and signal lights are received by sIgnal boards and f blocks" the color or directions of ! which must be reaa as literally as the l lamps. The engineer who notes G9S
 of these signs from his cab window
 and misses the seven hundredth has taken in race track language a "70C te ! shot" with train load of human lives.
 The public has good reason to asi whether the safety limit has not beer reached with both speed and rules
 There must be a point where the loco
 motive is so large and it's speed SC
 great that one human mind cannot
 safely control it no matter how teT
 the levers are. 4 ninetyton passen
 ger locomotive going at seventy miles
 an hour and operated by one mar | inside of it is as much a psychologi
 cal freak as q 250 pound human ath
 lete would be if turned loose with tnt brain of a 3-year-Old baby.-Harper': ! Weekly.