Letters From A Railway Official
delayed train a message to flag over. Encourage your men to flag over, block or no block, against any train on the road when common sense dictates such a course. The object of all rules is to run trains with safety, not to tie them up on technicalities. Flagging means good flagging, signals as sure and unmistakable as fixed signals. Some day we shall find time to instruct our flagmen uniformly. They should all either put the red light on the end of a tie and swing the white light across the track, or they should swing both lights; not sometimes one way, sometimes the other. A red light of itself means stop. If the flagman swings it he runs a big risk of blowing it out. In matters of this sort there cannot be too much uniformity for all roads. Where we run uniformity into the ground is where we fail to recognize the radical differences in individual characteristics of men of the Atlantic, the Pacific and the prairie type.
Realization, if not repentance, must precede salvation. We must save ourselves. If not, the government doctrinaires will undertake a task for which we are better qualified. We cannot stop killing people to-day or to-
159
