1920-30s...Messages delivered to non-stop trains
From: "Kenneth Owen" kj_owen@sbcglobal.net
During the late 1930's, Railroads would deliver Messages to Non-Stop trains, as they passed through small towns.
The Station-Master would stand close to the non-stop train, as it came running past. He would hold a wooden "Y" shaped apparatus. He held it by the bottom end of the "Y". He would tie a paper-written message onto a string; press the string into slits on the top of the "Y"; with the looped (tied) string hanging toward the bottom of the "V". A man on the moving train would stick out his arm; run it through the string loop, and thus retrieve the string with the message attached.
Please, what was the "Y" delivery apparatus called?
—Kenneth Owen, Amarillo, Tx
posted from CPRR Discussion Group at 8:50 AM
6 Comments:
If I remember correctly - a "hoop". I remember reading about "Hooping" up train orders.
From: Seth Bramson
My understanding, whether it was the "Y" apparatus or a "hoop" is that it was called "a hoop."
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup.]
Train order hoop.
—Art Lloyd
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup.]
There were several different kinds of message (train order) delivery devices in use but they were all called hoops, probably because the earlier devices of this kind actually were hoops. The train and engine men would snag the hoops, take the orders/messages out of the clip and throw off the empty hoop. The operator would have to walk down the track some distance to retrieve same. The later Y shaped devices featured a string held loosely in place whereby the train/engine crews snagged the message/orders and left the holder in the hand of the operator (if he was manually "hooping up" the orders or attached to a train order mast. These later devices saved train order operators considerable inconvenience and time
—Tom Guilfoil (former telegrapher)
[from the R&LHS Newsgroup.]
Also see the earlier comment.
Well, we used the Y on the KCS in the 50s. I don't see any mention here of the need to hold the Y up in the right direction. You could take a brakeman's arm off if you had it facing the wrong way.
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