From Hoops to Fiber Optics
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From Hoops to Fiber Optics
Communication is the name of the game in modern society. Everyone is connected to everyone else by tiny telephones and the internet. We get anxious when something happens to that communication link and we are out of touch with our world.
When the railroads started to become part of our national landscape there was no reliable form of communication. The trains ran strictly on a time schedule. The train left the depot at a specific time and had to be at the next depot of siding at a specific time. Trains would meet at specific times where one train would pull off on a siding to wait for the other train to safely pass. If the oncoming train was delayed for some reason the waiting train would be stuck indefinitely, waiting for the other to arrive and make its passage.
As the telegraph system started to develop some bright person realized that a telegraph message could be sent ahead to the next town to see what had happened to the delayed train. They could ask that the tardy train be held until they arrived at the next depot. This amazing bit of technology suddenly made train travel much more efficient.
The telegraph operator was commandeered to deliver messages to the passing trains giving them their instructions for each leg of their journey. The telegraph operator wrote down the messages, pinned them to a bamboo hoop, stood out next to the railroad track, and as the locomotive passed he held up the bamboo hoop with the instructions. The engineer reached out the cab window and grabbed the hoop containing his instructions. That was a bit dangerous and many telegraph operators were injured over the years.
Efforts were made to make it easier to talk to the passing trains. With the advent of radio the telegraph operator became the radio operator. He no longer needed the bamboo hoop. The locomotive was equipped with a radio and as the train passed a radio message was sent with the instructions for the train.
The radio soon made it possible for all the train instructions to be handled and communicated from a central location many miles away from the speeding trains. A series of radio and fiber optics systems have laced our nation keeping trains in constant communications with a central routing system. Our Union Pacific freight trains in Kingsville are all given their assignments from Spring, Texas. Instructions for which track to be on at what time, where to wait for a passing train, and even what cars to hitch and unhitch are all transmitted at the speed of light by radio and fiber optics.
In a blink of an eye information is accurately communicated. Gone are the days when the telegraph operator stood inches from the speeding locomotives, hoop in hand, delivering the instructions that moved a nation’s goods and people. Visit the 1904 Kingsville Train Depot Museum and view the telegraph display. If the “telegrapher” is on duty, ask for a demonstration of Land Line Morse Code.