By J. A. Phillips, III, with James M. Fredrickson
Originally Published in The Mainstreeter
The Quarterly Publication of the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association
Clarence Hay, Chief Dispatcher
Clarence Hay joined the NP in 1937, following in the footsteps of his father, a Rocky Mountain Division operator since 1910. In 1939 he joined the Relay Office, working system-wide in all but one office. From 1943-1945, and from 1946-1977 he worked in Missoula as a Dispatcher and Chief Dispatcher.
It Gets To Be Pretty Strenuous
How did they carve up the dispatching territories here? Hay: We had the territory between Livingston and Helena, was one territory, this was during World War Two, and we had another territory was from Helena to, I believe it was Helena to Garrison, and the Butte Line, from Garrison to Logan on the Butte Line, I believe that was a job. Then they had a job, Paradise to Missoula... Did that cover the High Line and the Low Line? Hay: It covered both lines, Paradise to Missoula, it covered both the High Line and the Low Line. In those years we dispatched the Helena mountain, which was the territory between Helena and Garrison, that was purely by Morse, and also the Butte Line was by Morse. We had four sets of dispatchers for a good period of time during the war years, and how the work was allocated I don't really remember exactly, but it was four tricks. Generally, the person that had the Butte Line would have another two branches or so, branch lines usually connected with the job whose territory the branches were in. During World War Two were you doing most of your dispatching over the phone, or still with the key? Hay: A good portion of it was by Morse. We dispatched by Morse right up until the day the closed the Missoula office. We did it on the branch lines and we also did it on the Butte Line. We did work the Morse, and if we had wire trouble, phone trouble, then we'd resort to the Morse. After the war they reduced the number of sets of dispatchers, then they were able to use the available telephone circuits so they extend it, like then, the telephone would be totally through from Livingston to Paradise, except the Butte Line, and the Butte Line remained telegraph as long as I worked.
How was dispatching the Low Line by comparison to the High Line? Did the majority of the traffic move that way? Hay: Oh yeah, the bulk of the traffic would go on the Low Line. During the war years we had operators at Saint Regis, Superior, Rivulet, De Smet, Missoula and of course at Paradise. We'd sometimes send operators to Lothrup. It would depend a lot on the amount of traffic that developed. What was dispatching on the Low Line out of Missoula like? Was it easier than going over Evaro for handling trains? Hay: Well, the only thing that made it easier going down the Low Line was the length of your sidings and your ability, you had operators that you could change your meets, you know. Generally going over Evaro you were limited by the size of your sidings, so it was a little bit more complicated. You could try and get trains moved over there and you couldn't use, maybe only one certain siding, so you had to regulate the flow of traffic pretty closely to make it feasible. Now how many trains constituted a busy day for a dispatcher? Hay: When you're dispatching trains, an engine gives you just as much work as a train of a hundred cars, you know what I mean? But opposing movements, I would suppose maybe like 15 in each direction, 15 trains in each direction would constitute a pretty busy day. From '41 until the end of the war it was really busy, about all you could handle. Do you remember what about the worst day on the job was? Hay: I can remember quite a few of the worst days. They were all about the same! (Laughs) Probably one of our most nightmarish times would be when we'd have like six troop trains in one direction and quite a number in the other direction, maybe four or so, in addition to our regular traffic. We'd have all these extra troop trains to contend with, and we had shortages of power, shortages of crews, insufficient sidings and maybe to top it off we'd have bad weather conditions. Really things that presented a lot of problems, so you multiply all this with maybe green help in a lot of positions and all that... I know that there were different times that I would come home and have almost nightmarish dreams of all the thoughts of what could have happened or might have happened if such and such, because you had all these people's lives when you were dispatching. You were always subject to human error, you know. You're just another human being and when you're dealing with people's lives it gets to be pretty strenuous.
Sixty Words A Minute
Who was about the fastest dispatcher you had on there, with Morse? Hay: Ronald Nixon I would say was probably our finest Morse operator and dispatcher. He was very capable. What's considered a good speed for sending in Morse? Hay: You mean a fast speed? I would say probably sixty words a minute or so. That would be using quite a bit of abbreviation and so forth. Dropping out the vowels and whatnot? Hay: We had a lot of standard abbreviations that we used, but normally, you know, in train order operation you didn't attempt to work at those speeds. You tried to stay at a speed that your operators were comfortable with and would not make any mistakes, so you slowed down an awful lot. Now how did their generation of railroaders differ from you and your generation? Hay: Well, we were a whole new... There's just as much difference between them and us as there is between our generation and yours. Same thing. I mean, their ideas were no good! No, we were a new breed, and we all wanted to do things better. That was just natural for a bunch of young people to want to do that. Did they look down at you as just a bunch of young punks? Hay: Oh sure, I'm sure they did. And we looked at them as a bunch of old fogies! I've heard that in Tacoma there were a couple of either Chief Dispatchers or old line dispatchers that kind of struck fear into the hearts of the younger fellows. Did you have a few of those? Hay: Oh Yes! You Bet! They were very stern, most of 'em, they were all of a very stern, fatherly demeanor. Did any of them wear the three-piece suit and the gold watch... ? Hay: Oh Yes! And the white shirt and the sleeves, you know... Did you guys wear greaves in the early years? Hay: No, we didn't, but they did! We wore white shirts though! There was a dress code in those days. We didn't resort to anything other than dress pants and dress shirts, and usually a tie, until quite a while after the war. And then finally the dress code began to relax.
Night Chief
Can you describe a typical day back when you were Night Chief? Hay: As Night Chief it was kind of a standard policy to show up fifteen or twenty minutes early to take a transfer, the business from the person on the preceding shift. So I would go to work a midnight, and go a 11:30 or 11:40 and take a transfer up and get an understanding of what was going on from the afternoon chief, and of course that constituted briefing on all of the trains that were on the road, all the trains that were coming up and how we were going to prepare for them, how we were going to furnish crews and what power we were going to have to furnish and what problems we were going to have to take care of and any other type of thing of interest that was important to the movement of the trains. Our main function as the Chief was to make sure that every train had power and crews and sometimes your resources in that regard were pretty limited because you had to get you power from some other source, or your crews from some other source, so it depended on what some other train or somebody else was doing, so it was a constant game of chess you might say to keep everything moving and preparing so that you didn't have a breakdown somewhere in the next few hours or the next day. You had to keep moving on things on a continuing basis. Were you kind of plotting things out in your head, saying we're going to have this rush of traffic over the weekend and we gonna need to factor that in? Hay: Oh yeah. You'd not only prepare for the moment, but as far out as you could, crew-wise and power-wise. You'd work with the information you had. Usually we'd have a report from each adjoining division, like we'd have a report on what they were going to deliver us in Livingston, in later years it was Laurel, what trains we were going to get and any pertinent information on them, and the same thing from Spokane, we'd confer with the Chief there and get a report of what they expected to deliver to us in the next 24-hour period. Then we'd plot our plan according to that. We'd determine what power we'd have to have, or what tonnage of trains we were going to have to have, and what they could have, and just work out a plan from that. We would then make our arrangements for our trains. If we had a certain amount of tonnage to move and had the power and the crews and what cars the yards could supply to us, it depended a lot on what the yards could do in switching these trains and whatnot, we had to deal with the Yardmasters, too. Once we found we could run a train we'd arrange to have the crews called and the power set-up for it and turn it over to the trick dispatcher, we'd give him what we called a call on a train, and then he would make arrangements to move it against the opposing trains that he had on his territory.
A Training Ground
When did the diesel engines really start to make a dent out here on the Division? It seems like you guys always got the diesels first. Hay: Yeah, we did. This was the territory where they experimented with everything! CTC, we got the first CTC, and they put it right on the mountain grade, which was the worst place you could, the worst operating conditions that you could ask for at that time, you know? So we got to try that out. It was probably in the middle-'fifties that the diesels, well, we were using steam and diesel for quite a few years there and gradually phased the steam out. Did the train speeds or the train times across the Division tend to pick up as the diesels came on line? Hay: No, I wouldn't say so, no. It was about the same. I can recall cases where we had diesel power, in those days we had the 6000-series diesels, we would have four units in the diesel, and we would have one Z-6, and I can remember cases where we had identical trains in tonnage with a diesel and a Z-6 train and I'm sure there was a little competition between the engineers that were going from Helena to Livingston and the steam engine was pushing the diesel all the way. I mean he was being held up all the way by the diesel ahead of him! (Laughs) And they had the same tonnage! I remember that specifically. We followed them pretty closely in those days to see which was doing the better, and I couldn't see any difference. You come to the mountain grades though, and I think that's where the diesels really make a difference. The Missoula depot was pretty much the nerve center for the Division, wasn't it? Hay: Oh yes. We had the Superintendents' Office upstairs, adjacent to the Relay Office. The Relay Office was more or less the hub of the communications at that time, and then the Dispatcher's Office next door to that, and the Chief Dispatcher's Office was adjacent to that. Since you were working upstairs next to the Superintendents, did you get to know any of the Superintendents very well? Hay: Well, I got to know all of them, of course. I got better acquainted with them after I was working the Chief Dispatcher's job regular. Then of course I had a lot more to do directly with them. Now what was the relationship between the Superintendent and the Chief Dispatcher? Hay: Pretty close. He'd come in and we'd talk, or he'd call us into his office and we would talk and confer on various subjects, usually on a daily basis. Who were the Superintendents from the 'forties on? Hay: In the 'forties I didn't get to know them very well 'cause I was comparatively new in the Dispatcher's Office at that time. Let me see, we had, man we went through a lot of Superintendents! There's a lot of 'em that I've forgotten I suppose. What was the name of the Superintendent that came to the house a couple of times? The young fellow? Boy, I can't remember! This has been a lot of years ago! (Laughing) I've been reading through some of the old Tell Tales. Did W.W. Walters... ? Hay: Walters! That's the guy! He was the young guy? He didn't look young in the pictures in the Tell Tale! Hay: He didn't? All those fellas! This was a sort of proving ground for Superintendents, they'd usually go on up the line from here, you know. In fact, I'm tryin' to think of the one that went right up the ladder to the top... Lorentzsen? (Later President of BN) Hay: Yeah, Norm Lorentzsen. He came here as a Trainmaster when we were running trains over the Butte Line when the Blossburg Tunnel caved in. That was his first assignment on the Rocky Mountain Division. He was trying to coordinate the movement of the trains over there with the Dispatchers and the Superintendent's Offices. What sort of tenure was standard for a Superintendent? Were they in, in four year shifts, or did it just sort of depend? Hay: I don't think they had any particular tenure before merger. There used to be kinda a standard route for moving up to Superintendent. Generally, in the early years, you know, you'd go from like a Chief Dispatcher maybe, to a Superintendent or Assistant Superintendent and General Manager and so forth. But in later years they started bringing in from different walks of life, they were bringing in from the Engineering Department or the Mechanical Department and they started meshing them in and so we had a better cross-section of railroaders running the job. As I recall in the early years there were an awful lot of Chief Dispatcher's who were Superintendents. There was one by the name of Showalter, E.H. Showalter, that was in the early years. He was a General Manager in the early years when I went dispatching. He was one in particular I remember. Of course Bill Walters was a dispatcher and he come up through the ranks to Superintendent. Harvey Avery, who was here during World War Two, he went to Superintendent of Transportation from a Chief Dispatcher's job.
Missoula West
Between Missoula and Paradise were the trains generally run one direction on one line and the other direction on another? Hay: Not necessarily. Generally, between Missoula and Paradise the tonnage and power on the trains determined which way the trains would go, and also the opposition. For example, we would try to run all passenger trains over the Dixon line, but during the war years we had a lot of troop trains and they didn't have adequate power and we didn't have sufficient sidings, sidings that were long enough so that we could run all the trains we wanted to over the Dixon line. There were a lot of determining factors, but mainly power and tonnage. Train order operation was kind of a slow way to move trains and we didn't always have stations open on the Dixon line so we could efficiently move the trains we wanted that way. When you were arranging meets on Evaro, where would be the best spot to put somebody in the hole? Hay: Generally it would be Evaro. It had a limited capacity in there, but generally a train that could go that way had a limited number of cars anyway, so you wouldn't run into problems there. I don't recall that we ever had any big problems with length of trains, except of a few of the freight trains coming eastbound. It was generally a predominant flow of empty cars going eastbound a lot of the times and those trains would be the ones we'd run via Evaro if we could. Of course, then the number of cars they had would determine whether we could run 'em that way at all. Where were the train order stations on the High Line? Hay: On the High Line we didn't have any, well we did too... During the war years we had station at Arlee I believe, we had a station at Evaro and mainly, on account of the helper operation, we used helpers between Missoula and Evaro going westbound and between Arlee and Evaro going eastbound, so we had those stations manned continuously. Also, we had operators at De Smet. And we had agents we had agents at Ravalli, and Dixon and Perma, and they were subject to call. The agent, he'd have a phone, they lived in a company house and then they had a company phone, so we could call them on overtime as we needed 'em, so that gave us enough manpower.
A Gathering Point For A Lot Of Business
Now what trains were coming across the division on a given day in the 'forties or 'fifties? Hay: Well, in those days we had quite a few passenger trains, we had Number One and Number Two, which were the better trains, and usually we had two sections of those, during most of the time, and then we'd have Three and Four, which were regular trains. Then we had branch line service, which were stub trains in between, let's see, we had trains running between Butte and Garrison, Butte and Logan, to connect with the main line trains which ran via Helena. Then we had stub trains between Logan and Helena, Garrison and Helena, which connected with the main line trains that ran via Butte. We had quite a few passenger trains in those days. We did have passenger train service to Wallace in those days, so I would say, passenger train-wise, we would have, maybe four, three or four each way across the Division. And what kind of freight traffic? Hay: Freight? We would usually have like a five or six regular freight trains in each direction. Then we would have our local trains, usually, it would depend on the amount of business, so a lot of times we would have maybe three or four locals in each direction, well, between here and Helena. We had a local that would go to Butte, we had a local that would run to Helena, we had a local that would run to Garrison, you know, depending on the amount of business that we had. What were the busiest times of the week for the dispatchers? Friday night, or... Hay: It seemed like the busy times were when they were clearing out the business on the coast. They would probably load out the heaviest on the week on Saturday, the end of the week on the coast, and then the other places along that were really producing the dominant amount of traffic that we were receiving, on our through trains, we would get hit with that on Monday and Tuesday. We'd get a surge of traffic coming from the west coast territories. Then we'd get that same thing in reverse. I can't recall any particular times of the week, but the times of the year, like when the grain harvest would pick up we'd get really heavy grain movement, and when the livestock movement would pick up going east, we'd have heavy movement of livestock eastbound. It was those times of the year that we'd notice the big upturn in traffic. Did you tend to have trains every once in a while, waiting outside the yard limits to get in? Hay: Oh yeah. That was a frequent occurrence. It seemed like it happened a lot here in Missoula, I'm not exactly sure why, but this was a gathering point for a lot of locals. We had locals from the Bitterroot, we had locals from the Wallace, we had locals from Paradise and Polson and Butte. A gathering point for a lot of business. We also had one of the automated yards here, in the early years. And we also had double track, on each side of the station (and Missoula) so we could accommodate these trains. We would bring 'em in purposely and let 'em sit on the double track until we could get 'em into the yards and so forth. We'd just bring the crews into town, in other words, and relieve the crews before we could get at it with a switch engine. What was kind of the rush season out here on the NP? Hay: During the crop season it would pick up, you know and during the summer and fall months I think were probably the busiest times, springtime's would be pretty slow. Wintertime was always busy on account of the weather conditions, you had limited tonnage that you could haul in the wintertime, mainly due to your problems with the air. The air would freeze up on the train, you couldn't get the air through to properly operate the brakes so wintertime you would have a pretty limited number of cars you could haul on the freight trains. So that created a lot of extra trains because they would be reduced in size. Do you know what kind of drop in tonnage they were cut from? Hay: It would depend a lot on the weather. A lot of times it wouldn't be so much the tonnage as it would be the number of cars that you could get the air through. You could start out with a hundred cars and if you couldn't get the air through a hundred cars well they'd keep reducing until they could get the air through. There was a lot of theories on that and a lot of people had different ideas what should be done, what shouldn't be done, of course in the Dispatcher's Office we followed the instructions that were given to us by our superiors, so we generally followed whatever the Superintendent's Office handed down to us.
Author: John A. Phillips, III. Title: Tales of the Rocky Mountain Division -- Clarence Hay.
URL: pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/rmhay.html.