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Show TELEGRAPHIC TRAIN SIGNALS. A Conductor Discharged and an Engineer En-gineer Whipped in the Interest of Science. In 1850 the Erie road was in operation between Piermontand Elmira The track was a single one, such a thing as a double track being then unknown in the country. Two years before, after much discussion and opposition, a telegraph wire had been put up along the line. Superintendent Minot, who was a man a long way in advance ad-vance of the times, was a strong believer in the practicability of the telegraph as a facilitator of transportation on railroads. In the summer of 1850 he was a passenger passen-ger one day on a west-bound train over his road. The train he was on, according to the printed time table, was to meet a through train from the west .at Turner's station, forty-seven miles from New York. When Mr. Minot's train reached Turner's he learned that the east-bound train was six hours late, owing to a mishap. Under the system of railroading then governing -employes, the west-bound train had to remain at Turner's until the delayed train passed the station; In fact the whole business from there west was at a standstill, owing to the non-arrival of the train at the different stations where other trains were awaiting it. Superintendent Superin-tendent Minot saw at once how ridiculous such a system was. There was a telegraph tele-graph office at Turner's, and it was then the only one between that station and Jersey City. The superintendent went to this office and made the - operator's hair stand by sending a message to the station agent at Port Jervis that he intended in-tended to run the train he was on from Turner's to Port Jervis on the time of the belated east-bound" train. He ordered the agent not to let any train leave that station going east until the train he was on arrived there. He also ordered the agent to telegraph to him how he understood under-stood the message. The answer was satisfactory, and the superintendent went to the conductor of the train and told him to start on with his train. The conductor refused to do so, and the superintendent discharged him on the spot. Minot then ordered the engineer en-gineer to pull out. The engineer said he would not take the risk, and in the argument argu-ment that followed, the superintendent dragged the engineer from his cab,- gave j him an elegant dressing out and mounted the foot-board himself. He ran the train to Port Jervis, and sent it on west as far as Narrosburg before it met the late train, thus saving the passengers five hours, and settling forever the question of the accuracy of the telegraph in running railroad rail-road trains. It is a common thing now to move as many as twenty trains in opposite op-posite directions" over one division of a railroad. Cincinnati Enquirer. |