El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1910-10-25
NEW SYSTEM FOR
PROTECTION Of
TRAINS
Santa Fe's Precautions on
New Mexico Hills--NeW
Lamy Hotel.
(By G. A. Martini


Lamy, n. NJ, Oct 25.-The Santa Fe
rail road has installed automatic dis
patching machines. called staff ma
chanes, on the Glorietta and Ration
hills that absolutely do away with the
possibility of collisions on these very
steep grades.
The dispatchers at Albuquerque and
| Trinidad have absolutely no controI
! over train on either of these hills.
Each conductor is his own dispatcher
and he blocks the track himself so that
! nobody else enters the block with
train until he clears it. The system
operates from Lamy UP the Glorietta
mountains to Glorietta, a distance OF
10 miles and from Ration, over the RAJ
ton Pass. through the Ration tunnel TO
Trinidad, Colo. These staff machines
| are located at Lamy and Glorietta and
at Canyoncito, midway between and at
! Ration and Trinidad and one station be-
! tween these points.
How the Scheme Works.
When train arrives at Glorfett2s
| going south. for instance, the conduc-
| tor enters the dispatcher's office and
| takes a staff or key from the staff ma
| chine. This automatically closes the
( track from Glorietta down to Canyon
| cito, a distance of five miles. Soma
| phores. at both stations Immediately
show all approaching trains at either
end that train is in the block and
nobody can open the track but the
] conductor who mas the staff that
locked it. When the train gets down to
Canyoncito, the conductor enters the
diSpatcher's office again, inserts the
| key in the machine and unlocks The
| two SemaphoreS. If another train is
coming up the hill between Lamy and
CanyOncito, he will find the next block
! locked" and he takes a siding. If ii
is open, he locks the block himself and
until ne gets down to Lamy, no train,
either from behind or in front. can
come in until he reaches Lamy and
''unlocks" the block again.
There are but two keys for a block
one at each end-and if the block Is
locked at the one end, the key at the
other end cannot be removed until the
conductor gets there with the dupli-
cate key, hence nobody can open"
block while train is in it. 1t is a new
invention and said to be one of the
safest devices ever invented for NOV
ing trains in safety. especially on a
steep grade.
The New Harvey Hotel.
The Harvey hotel system has the
reputation for doing unique things, but
in the construction of its new hotel
FL Ortiz-at this place. it reached the
climax. The hotel is a low, one-story
building and is considered the most
notable of all the unique Harvey
houses. 1t is built to represent an old
time Mexican ranch house with pig
main room in front and the sleeping
rooms forming three sides of a square
about a patio, with cement floor and
evergreen shrubs. Every room has a
cement floor and mission furniture.
with low windows barred on the out
side after the fashion of Mexican resi- |
dences of half a century ago. Indian I
rugs cover the floors The rooms are |
steam heated and have running hot |
and cold water and baths, which is the |
only instance where they are not typic- |
al of the ancient structure the hotel |
represents. The doors are made of |
heavy slabs. nailed with big headed |
nails, and there are latches on them Of |
the old style, with the numbers in /
beaten, cankered brass. But this is NOT
the real peculiar feature. The big |
room" is not only. a counterpart of an /
ole ranch house, but it is an old ranch |
house. Weather worn beams taken
from a New Mexico landmark a hun
dred years old, support the flat roof
just as they did originally and a fire
place II feet wide is an ancient fire
place transplanted from it's original
Inc dnulIOuSB the SDONSls
poker and all came from the same
source and the decorations are as old
as the building material. All the chairs, !
tables and benches came from historic
hotels. ranch houses or native
churches of the pioneer days, and the
paintings. idols and ancient clock are
hundreds of years of age. The paint
ings were brought from Spain by The
friars and they hang on the walls in
%I1cIv. hrT+ IL
they hung in the homes or old churches
in the territory for a century or even
more. Images like those in the old So
zorro church, peculiarly carved from
wood or fashioned from clay by the
hands of primitive indians. grace the
mantel and hooks and corners.
grandfather clock, purchased from
a Mexican woman so years old, at Clio
rietta, who said it had belonged to her
grandfather, is one of the curiositics.
counterpart of this clock-according
to the grandson of the Glorietta wo-
man, himself 40 years of age-was
shown at the st. Louis Worlds fair and
he says it is the only one of the kind
he ever heard of. By a coincidence lie
was at Lamy en- route to Santa Fe as
waited here for the train to the same |
place,
The hotel has wide, floorless porch
across the 'front.', removed from an an
cient New Mexico ranch house and put
up here, its gnarled and whitfield |
posts and its weather stained roof
testifying to its age. The
building is Of adobe, whitewashed in
side and out-the guest rooms are cal |
cimined and more modern-and the !
walls are very thick. The hotel lacks
none Of the modern conveniences, even
to electric call bells in the rooms.
1ut nowhere is there a public house
io1,,o |