The Train and the Telegraph: A Revisionist History
Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: Benjamin Sidney Michael Schwantes is perplexed by the slow adoption of communication technology by US railroads to manage train movements. The benefits appeared to be obvious as early as 1842, when British telegraph pioneer William Fothergill Cooke published a pamphlet describing the ways telegraph dispatching would improve the coordination of trains to increase throughput and safety (15–16). The telegraph increased a train’s awareness to the locations of other trains along the same tracks. The information reduced the likelihood of an accident and enabled quicker adjustments to train movements for unanticipated events like an engine breakdown. The benefits of telegraphic dispatching appeared particularly high for single-track sections of railroads. A majority of railroad companies in the United States operated some single-track railroad. So why did it take so long for US railroads to adopt and fully utilize telegraphic dispatching, especially when compared to Great Britain?Schwantes characterizes American railroad managers as conservative in their business decisions. The telegraph represented risk. There was risk to their railroad operations if something on the telegraph line broke, harming trains and passengers (17). There was risk of losing their corporate charter if a state determined granting railroad right-of-way access to private telegraph companies or operation of a telegraph by the railroad itself was beyond the scope of their charter (23–24).On top of risk of direct harm to the railroad was the risk of the return on investment into telegraphic dispatching. Risk was twofold for early adoption of the telegraph. First, competition over the validity of various telegraph patents meant a railroad faced the risk of being forced to shut down their telegraph dispatching operations if the telegraph patent they elected to use was declared invalid by the courts (140). Second, there was uncertainty over the magnitude of the impact on improving preexisting practices. American railroad managers had already developed relatively effective sophisticated operating practices and rules that did not require the use of the telegraph (7). Schwantes refers to these various rule and regulation approaches as the American System. In addition, some railroads, especially in New England, already achieved effective improvement in railroad operations without additional telegraph infrastructure by double tracking their railroad network (83).For telegraphic dispatching to be low risk, messages needed to be reliably sent and received in a timely manner. Early telegraph systems were physically unreliable (26). Later, more developed telegraph service provided by commercial operator Western Union prioritized more lucrative commercial messages over railroad telegraphic dispatches, resulting in systemic delays in delivery of telegraphic dispatches (91).Schwantes argues the lack of competition among commercial telegraphic service providers hindered railroads’ ability to pressure commercial telegraph services for reliable telegraphic dispatching. Many railroads relied on commercial telegraph lines for telegraphic services since they lacked the finances to construct their own private telegraph system (92). After the Civil War that usually meant dealing with Western Union, who was the dominant commercial telegraph company in the United States (91). While Western Union provided low-priced telegraph messages to railroads as part of the compensation for right-of-way access for Western Union’s telegraph lines, the priority for the speed of transmission was inadequate for telegraphic dispatching. For Western Union the low price charged for railroad telegrams made the messages a burden that took away resources from more lucrative commercial messages (94). Railroad managers hoped a competitor would provide them the leverage to get better terms from the telegraph companies (95). Alas, railroad managers’ hopes were dashed as multiple competitors repeatedly merged with Western Union (95–97).The hesitancy to transition to new communication technology in the late 1800s and early 1900s fits within Schwantes’s characterization of the conservative nature of American railroad managers. Instead of implementing new technology, like block signaling, American railroads elected instead to work with associations to try to standardize pre-existing operation rules (119). The rules and regulations for train movement were not always consistent across other railroad companies or within a railroad company due to mergers and acquisitions, resulting in accidents from miscommunication (106).Schwantes argues that if it were not for the increase in costs of telegraphers due to federal legislation, railroads would have resisted even longer to upgrade to telephone dispatching (143). American railroad managers were uncertain about the effectiveness of large-scale telephone dispatching. They could easily identify potential concerns, such as the lack of written orders, that made them hesitant to adopt the technology (138–40).The 1907 Hours of Service Act increased the cost of telegraphic dispatching by limiting the number of hours telegraph operators were allowed to work (120–21). The reduction in the supply of telegraph operators spurred American railroads to experiment with telephone operators (141). Telegraph operators were highly skilled workers who required months of specialized training (134, 142). American railroads pleasantly discovered that experienced railroad employees already possessed the skills to become telephone dispatch operators, including employees no longer fit to work on other parts of the railroad because of injuries (142).Density and scale of railroad operations mattered in deciding when to implement more sophisticated telegraphic dispatching. An underlying theme throughout the book is the density of traffic on American railroads was not high enough to justify the expense of developing more sophisticated telegraphic dispatching. Repeatedly Schwantes demonstrates that railroads faced with high enough density of traffic started to implement more sophisticated forms of telegraphic dispatching. During the Civil War, Eastern and Midwestern railroads adopted and increased their use of telegraphic dispatching when their tracks were flooded with wartime traffic that taxed preexisting forms of managing train movements (75). When the Camden & Amboy Railroad’s mainline from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to Philadelphia became saturated with traffic in 1865, the railroad used the telegraph to implement block signaling (88–89).Schwantes makes a case that the uncertainty over new communication technology resulted in American railroad managers being hesitant to adopt it for dispatching. Operating a railroad is a complicated business where one change can have many unintended consequences. American railroad managers already possessed alternative technological improvements to newer communication technology, such as double tracking and the American system.Schwantes’s book motivates future research on whether American railroads would be more efficient if managers were more aggressive in implementing new dispatching communication technology. Work should be done, for example, on the sources of cost differences between railroads in the United States and railroads in Great Britain to provide further clarity on whether implementing new communication technology earlier in the United States made financial sense.
Source: Pennsylvania history
Author: Aaron M. Honsowetz
Institution: Bethany College
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4285218436