American Morse Code Used on North American Railroads

The Tele­graph machines were invent­ed before the Tele­phone.

(Please Click your cur­sor on “The Amer­i­can Morse Code” in line 3 below for an expla­na­tion from Wikipedia about Codes)

There were two Morse Codes. The first was  the Inter­na­tion­al Morse Code which was used by “Ham Radio Oper­a­tors”, ships at sea, and the mil­i­tary Army, Navy and Air Force. The sec­ond Morse Code was the The Amer­i­can Morse Code used by North Amer­i­can Rail­roads. There were 10 let­ters dif­fer­ent between the 2 codes. The Rail­road Teleg­ra­ph­er was a very impor­tant employ­ee. He was the mid­dle­man between the Train Dis­patch­er and the employ­ees on the Trains. The Rail­roads required com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the rail­head con­struc­tion site to their head­quar­ters with dai­ly reports on how many miles had been laid that day. Some Rail­road Teleg­ra­phers learned the code by going to Tele­graph Schools. Oth­ers became Assis­tant Agents, and learned from the Agent and prac­tised on the Tele­graph key and mem­o­rized the Rule Book while off-duty. They wrote an exam­i­na­tion on rules, and if they passed that, they were sent out as relief Teleg­ra­phers until obtain­ing enough senior­i­ty to hold down a per­ma­nent posi­tion. Anoth­er posi­tion was the Com­mer­cial Teleg­ra­ph­er, who han­dled Com­mer­cial Telegrams and News­pa­per traf­fic, and also com­mu­ni­cat­ed with Com­mer­cial Telegrams to the Rail­road Teleg­ra­ph­er Agents. The expe­ri­enced Rail­road Teleg­ra­ph­er could advance his employ­ment to becom­ing a Sta­tion Agent, or a Train Dis­patch­er when his senior­i­ty allowed.. They were held in great esteem by the Pub­lic and the Officials.