Remember These?

[Dave Hudson]

My mother yelled at me for collecting them in the early 70s. My wife is
yelling at me because I still have a bunch of them.

I remember hooping it up on the Iowa Division and forms 44 & 19.

Dave

[Snbr...@aol.com]

I do indeed remember them!  I too have a collection of clearance forms and train orders from the St. Louis Division.


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[Dave Hudson]

As a kid I would hang out around West Grant near Galena, IL. I loved it
when someone forgot to lock the phone booth. I would slip inside, flip
the knife switch to "Dispatcher" and listen to that 60 cycle hum hoping
to hear some station call in a train movement.

"JEM" was a pretty common set of initials for the Iowa Division.

Dave

[Snbr...@aol.com]

My grandfather was agent-operator at Reevesville, Illinois on the St. Louis Division at the junction of the Bluford, Carbondale, and Golconda Districts from 1914-1954 and I learned telegraphy and all about train orders, "OSing" trains to the dispatcher in Carbondale, and much else in the waning days of steam operation in the early 1950s right there beside him at the operator's desk in the bay window of the depot.  Got to ride on steam engines and in cabooses and on section gang motor cars.  What a grand experience it was!

Steve

[Tom]

My father was an engineer and they would end up laying around the
house until they got thrown away.

[Snbr...@aol.com]

How I wish that I had saved many more of those Form 19 train orders.  They tell so much about the actual train operations in those days.  They were often used as tissue paper in railroad outhouses!

[Dave Hudson]

The crews would save them for me. Actually, they saved all kinds of
stuff (junk) for me. I have employee timetables, rule books and even a
locomotive manual or two along with my treasured form 44s and 19s.

One of the engineers even gave me a BLE pamphlet on how to safely board
moving railway equipment! (I was 11 or 12 years old at the time.) The
local would slow down as it came by my house so I could get on and ride
to the other side of town to do its work. Can you imagine the look on
the face of today's risk management folks at something like this. LOL

I used to spend time with a couple of the operators at East Cabin in
East Dubuque, IL. One fellow taught me how to make the strings that were
used on the order forks. There wasn't much science to it. It was just a
way to kill time between trains, I guess.

Somehow I ended up with one of the order forks from Galena, IL. I used
to watch agent William Garvey hand up orders on occasion. The East Cabin
guys were always using their "hoops". That order fork is one more
railroad thing that my wife is thrilled about!

The photo is swing shift operator Bob Spautz handing orders up to the
west local in July 1980.

Dave

[Snbr...@aol.com]

I too learned how to tie the slip knots in the strings for the order forks!  My grandfather at the depot in Reevesville would then let me string the orders to the forks attached to the trackside posts that held the forks at the right height for the engine and caboose, so that the operator didn't have to stand there and personally hold the forks for the passing train.  Much appreciated on rainy and snowing days and nights!  I would also listen in on the dispatcher's wire and copy the train orders and clearances myself on the Form 19s and 44s and take them home. I still have a few of them signed with my name as "operator."  I loved to sit by the hour listening to the dispatcher's line, make my own dispatcher's train sheets, and record the OS reports of the operators up and down the line to keep track of where all the trains were.  On Saturday mornings the I.C. agent in my hometown of Metropolis, Illinois would give me the switching instructions for the local and I would string them on a train order fork, stand by the track, and "hoop them up" to the fireman as the engine of the local passed.  He would also let me OS the local to the dispatcher.  I felt very "grown up!"  All great memories of the I.C. in the fifties.

Steve

Steve