Railroad Telegraphers Handbook 1991

This delightful little book was printed in 1991 and has since gone out of print.
However the Internet Archive has a scanned/PDF copy available for download at the link under the title below.

This review comes courtesy of Jim Haynes at the old Telegraph Lore website.

Enjoy
73
Ciao
KJ

Railroad Telegraphers Handbook
by Tom French, 1991

The Railroad Telegrapher's Handbook is a newly-written (1991) book that tells all about how Morse telegraphy was used on railroads until nearly the present time. (An article in Dots and Dashes reproduces a train order that was received by Morse in 1982, on the Burlington-Northern, and may have been the last train order so transmitted.) Lists of operating rules are given, presumably taken from the rule books of actual railroads, along with sample train order messages. Railroad telegraphy is a lot more complicated than the ordinary Western Union office. Railroad messages are critical to safety; some messages are not complete until they have been repeated back to the sender, delivered to the addressees, read and signed by the addressees, and the signatures transmitted back to the sender. Most require multiple copies. A railroad operator would write with a stylus on thin, translucent paper, using double-sided carbon paper. Semaphore signals and the hooks for delivering messages to the crews of moving trains are described.

Wiring diagrams are given for an operating table connected to several circuits, and for a Morse repeater. There is a map of the New Mexico Division of AT&SF;, showing how various offices are connected to several line circuits. A selector system is described, which allows calling up a particular telegraph office without requiring operators to listen constantly for their office call letters. (Most circuits were "way" operated, meaning that several offices were connected by the same circuit and sounders at all responded to all the traffic on the line.)

The book is made all the more enjoyable with reproductions of advertisements that appeared in trade magazines: typewriters, telegraph instruments, Vibroplex keys, swivel chairs, shorthand instruction, and an attachment to enable a bicycle to be ridden on the railroad rail. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad was advertising for operators "able to copy Morse at 25 words per minute, and should be in good physical condition." as recently as 1954. Of considerable interest in this day when we hear so much about repetitive motion injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome, there is an advertisement for Telegrapher Liniment, which never fails where directions are followed implicitly. "Operator's Paralysis or Writer's Cramp comes like a thief in the night, and almost before you are aware of it you find it impossible to send any kind of readable Morse." Another advertisement is for the "Operator's Friend" a massage or exercise device which "prevents and cures telegrapher's paralysis and writer's cramp." The front cover reproduces an artist's illustration from the front cover of a 1904 telegrapher's magazine, showing a young man clad in white shirt, high collar, and vest working at his key while a uniformed trainman waits at his elbow for orders. There are two pages of railroad slang and two pages of bibliography.