Courtesy of Dave Sprau.
June 1987
Dave says:
"Train dispatchers "graph" of movements in CTC installed mostly
on Great Northern days, between Edmonds and Harrington. Way too much to
document here except to say this graph rolled along slowly, sort of
like a window shade, from one roller to another, and the time of day is
shown at the left. The time of day on the graph is 5.40 PM. Amtrak
1008 went by Edmonds and cleared the double
track at east end at 528 pm; then Pacific Zip No 3 went thru the single
track at Edmonds one minute afterward. The Kirkland Turn ran from
Snohomish to Lowell 20 minutes ago and then No 600 occupied the switch
at Lowell to make his pick up and is still there. Advance 12 just went
by Gold Bar. 103 left Skykomish 7 minutes ago so obviously they are
going to meet at Baring. The identity of trains is inked in by hand,
as you see. Some identities cant be seen, because they are written on a
portion of the graph not photographed here. Part of dispatchers
duties when we had this old equipment was to take a pen and "connect the
dots" - the "dots" being those little jogs of an automatic pen on
this graph paper each time a train goes past a control point, -usually
the siding switches at a station. Then when you connect all the dots
you get a nice little "picture" of the operation. Technology and
procedure consigned to the garbage can about 30 years ago."
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