Steam era signals

[ngauger]

... On passenger trains their was a communication cord in each passenger car...

Back when I rode the Pennsy MP54 MU cars in and out of Philly daily on the Paoli Local, the conductor would signal the motorman when everone had gotten off and on with two short toots on a whistle activated by a cord in the vestibule. (When the "new" Silverliners appeared, the whistle had been repaced with a buzzer.)

We used to joke with new neighbors about getting up from your seat and starting down the aisle towards the vestibule as the train left the station prior to yours. Since the stations are often no more than a mile or two apart, if you waited to get up from your seat until the train pulled into your stop, if there was no one waiting on the station platform for the train, the conductor, as he hung out to look, seeing no one on the platform and no one in the vestibule waiting to get off, would double-pull the cord before a complete stop was achieved. We jokingly called it a "pause," where upon you got to get off at the next station.

Schedule was schedule back then. Time waiting at one station for a group of passengers to get off and on was made up by only "pausing" at stations where there was no one getting on or off.

And it works Exactly the same way today too.. A "Flag stop" is a station (Like my town) where the train comes to a rolling stop, just like a car at a stop sign, and then continues to the next station. That makes up for the stations where it takes more than a minute to load/unload passengers.

The time tables are set that it takes about 90 seconds to 2 minutes to:
Leave a station, move to the next station (1 mile away), Load/Unload. After the load/unload is complete, the next cycle starts.

If a station has someone who needs extra attention and/or extra time to get on the train, the time has to be made up somewhere. It's amazing how this stuff works.