[GreenKeys] TeleAutograph

[Jones, Douglas W]

From: Steve Garrison [steve.n4tty at gmail.com] Thursday, December 29, 2016 7:46 PM
Subject: [GreenKeys] TeleAutograph

> Does anyone remember these

There used to be a number of Teleautographs in Union Station, Chicago into the mid 1970s.  The sending unit was in the tower, where the dispatcher worked.  He'd write train orders on them which would be repeated by teleautographs scattered around the station.  One of them was behind glass in the concourse that connected all the southbound platforms.  I remember stopping there and watching it in some fascination.  The train orders repeated there that mattered were the departure orders for southbound trains.  When a train was ready to depart, someone from the train crew (the conductor?) would go to that teleautograph to await his departure order.  Then he'd carry it to the train and start the departure.

I gather from other sources (I did some research for the Teleautograph writeup in Wikipedia) that there were similar teleautograph setups in a number of other large railroad stations.  Typically, one would be in the information desk, and others wherever the operating rules required written train order delivery.

               Doug Jones
               jones at cs.uiowa.edu