It is vigilance, eternal vigilance, that is the price of safety. Teach your men that a hundred successes do not justify an avoidable failure, that twenty years of faithful service cannot condone criminal carelessness. A fundamental is that when backing up there should always be a man on the rear end. Educate your men to feel that neglect of this wise precaution is just as mortifying as to appear in public without clothes. In shoving long cuts of cars without using air, get your brakemen and switchmen to feel a pride in setting a hand brake on the end car to take the slack and save the jerk on the drawbars. Work for the old-time feeling of chagrin that came to the calloused-armed passenger brakeman, in the days of Armstrong brakes, when he did not go after them soon enough and let his train run by the station. The men are not to blame for this loss of pride and interest. We, the officials, are at fault. We have not kept ahead of the game. We have been coroners, not sanitary inspectors.
If an engine is waiting at a hand derail or at a crossover for a train, neither switch should be thrown until the train has passed. Then, if the throttle happens to fly open at just the wrong moment, the train will not be sideswiped. If not trained, your switchmen will throw every switch possible beforehand so as to be ready. They may think such precautions are old womanish, but the time will come when your wisdom will be vindicated. If a train is waiting for a connection, with a siding switch in rear, the facing point switch should be opened, so that if the incoming man loses his air or misjudges distances the train will not be hit. Similarly a flagman going back to protect a train between switches should open the siding switch as he passes it. The switch is more effectual than a torpedo, and if a following train happens to get by him and his torpedoes his own train will not be hit. He should flag just the same, because a train entering the open switch too fast might turn over. It is better to take a chance on a derailment than on a collision. It is better still to have such training, vigilance and discipline that there will be little chance of either disaster.
Train your men to do things because they are right, because it is manly to do good railroading. Then, when you hold an investigation you will not find at the moment the accident happened that the engineman was priming his injector, the fireman putting in a fire, the head brakeman shoveling down coal, the conductor sorting his bills, and the hind man starting to boil coffee for supper.