Steam & Excursion > Hooping it Up

September 16 and 17, 2017 was annual Railroad Days at the Monticello Railway Museum, and all hands are on deck with up to four simultaneous train movements using the single track line. A new addition for 2017 was operating track signals to aid the movement of trains. Between runs of the diesel passenger train, we learned the Nelson Crossing agent had train orders for southbound train 25, led by Southern #401, as this sequence shows.

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That is soooo cool!! I had no idea any railroad
museum did that. Great pictures, too!

Now -- imagine doing THAT when the train is
thundering past you at 50 mph! Eeeek!
Order posts were much safer.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/17 15:47 by Margaret_SP_fan.

The order and the string are strung on the 'hoop' through a spring at the base of the 'V".
The trainman just has to put his arm through the loop and the order is 'his', and it cannot be dropped outside of the cab.
The agent could stand about a step closer to the yellow line and allow the pickup to be at a higher level.
Just my 0pinion!

James R.(Jim) Baker
Whittier, CA

I agree he is standing too far back.
The way I was taught and the I did it on the
Rock Island was face the train and place my near
foot just inside the line. Once the head end
had their set, I moved back away from the track and watched
for the rear end. Of course for a psgr train you stayed
put and grabbed your second (and then third) hoops.
ze190

Margaret_SP_fan Wrote:
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> That is soooo cool!! I had no idea any railroad
> museum did that. Great pictures, too!
>
> Now -- imagine doing THAT when the train is
> thundering past you at 50 mph! Eeeek!
> Order posts were much safer.


The Texas State Railroad has done it as well. Simple way to add some excitement and interest to a railfan charter.

Jason Rose
Spring, TX
Rio Grande Explorations

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This brings back a lot of memories. It was possible to make 9 copies of an order with double-sided carbon paper on a flimsy pad. Some guys bragged they could make 11 copies. Every time you wrote out a new batch, you had to repeat it to the dispatcher and log it on the block sheet. If you had an order for all trains it could get hectic … in a tower between operating the interlocking, making copies, stringing them and going outside to hoop them you could be very busy during the rush hour. Then if you were at a ticket office with an interlocking machine, it would be even hairier. You had to sell tickets, manage impatient customers, manage the money while pacifying rushed customers, manage the interlocking without delaying trains (or much worse, mis-routing them!), make sure the train order sign was mounted outside, and still copy and deliver orders to the correct crews … not a job for the faint of heart ! Anybody else want to chime in with your story?

Margaret_SP_fan Wrote:
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>
> Now -- imagine doing THAT when the train is
> thundering past you at 50 mph!

How about thundering past at 50 mph in freezing fog on an ice-covered platform while holding on to a rope tied to the depot door handle so that you didn't slide out into the track (or in the case of Essex MT and maybe some other places, a rope tied to the door handle so that you could find the right place to stand when the track was invisible under the snow)?

TAW

That fireman needs to learn to put his arm through the loop, not grab with his hand.

TAW

zr190 Wrote:
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> I agree he is standing too far back.
> The way I was taught and the I did it on the
> Rock Island was face the train and place my near
> foot just inside the line.

I started with no platform and no line. I learned to touch the fork to the end of the tie then the same angle up from horizontal as down.



> Once the head end
> had their set, I moved back away from the track
> and watched
> for the rear end.

The pinging of dragging chain or wrrr of flying Signode banding in the dark is not what you want to hear at the same time as the power is going by. I have literally turned and dived away as soon as I felt the head end get the orders.


> Of course for a psgr train you
> stayed
> put and grabbed your second (and then third)
> hoops.

...and in the later days of passenger trains as main line passenger trains became rather abbreviated, it could be more tricky than before. At 75th Street (Chicago) the PM (C&O) conductors and flagmen had a habit of opening up at adjacent vestibules. If I had anything for them, it was usually wrong main, so the engineer was getting it down to the 15 mph crossover 10 cars away, but still had to be quick - a hoop in each hand.

TAW

wrap your orders in wax paper on rainy days...

RedFusee Wrote:
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> wrap your orders in wax paper on rainy days...

Right, and in the dark, hoop in one hand ant lantern in the other, lighting the orders so they can see them.

TAW