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Show MAKING TRAVEL SAFE. 'Have ycu ever thought that all that stands between the trains and eternity is the bit of tissue tucked in the engineer's blouse and its duplicate crammed in the conductor's eide pocket?" The foregoing is the introduction to an article in Popular Magazine Mag-azine which is intended to impress the traveling public with tho responsibility of the train dispatcher. No dcubt the man who directs all the movements of trains is a mighty factor in safely guiding the trustful public over the rails, but-the magazine evidently is telling of a railroad on-which, when the train dispatcher forgets or the conductor goes to sleep, there is nothing to stay the hand of Death as trains speed together. That was true of our western roads before Ilarriman com- menced his policy of reconstruction. When the genius of the railroad rail-road died, nearly the entire system of which he was the head, centering cen-tering in Ogden, was so equipped with automatic devices with which to prevent accidents that disasters, the direct cause of human frail-ities, frail-ities, were almost eliminated. There are instances of where train dispatchers had issued "lap orders" and train crews had forgotten and yet an arm of warning was raised by the dumb and inanimate. Today on the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific and Oregon Short Line the block signal will not allow the employes of the road to perpetrate a mistake in train dispatching or forget. Not half that can be said in praise has been told of the practical working of the block signal. In the west it is one of the constant reminders of the thoroughness and progressiveness of E. H. Harnman. |