Order of Railroad Telegraphers

The Order of Railroad Telegraphers (ORT) was a United States labor union established in the late nineteenth century to promote the interests of telegraph operators working for the railroads.

While early telegraph lines often ran alongside railroad tracks in the United States, it was not until 1851 that the telegraph was first used for train routing by Charles Minot, Superintendent of the Erie Railroad. As the practice gained wider acceptance in the 1860s and 1870s, telegraphers would be stationed in individual depots along the railroad line in order to receive train orders from a centrally located dispatcher and report back on train movements; telegraphed train orders would be written out on paper and "handed up" to the crews of passing trains.

This practice greatly increased the efficiency of single-track railroads by enabling two trains traveling in opposite directions to use the track at the same time. The dispatcher would designate one of the trains as the "superior" train and give it right of way over the "inferior" train, which would be required to pull into a siding until the superior train had passed. Local depot telegraph operators would keep track of train arrival times at each station (referred to as "OSing" the train) and pass the information on to other operators and the dispatcher. The local depot operator would also set the track switches to enable the inferior train to pull into the siding upon the approach of the superior train.

The ability of the local depot operators to keep track of the actual time of train movements was particularly important in the era before the establishment of time zones, when local "sun time" might be different at each station; a miscalculation of the "meet time" of two trains running on a single track could result in disaster. Thus railroad telegraphers played a role in the operation of the railroads that was not unlike the role of air traffic controllers in the modern airline industry; they enabled the trains to run safely and on time.

In the 1860s, U.S. telegraphers began to form labor organizations, including the National Telegraphic Union and the Telegraphers' Protective League, in order to promote professionalism, negotiate for higher wages, and demand better working conditions. However, following an unsuccessful strike by the Brotherhood of Telegraphers, an affiliate of the Knights of Labor, in 1883, the railroad operators began to see themselves as occupationally distinct from the commercial telegraph operators, who worked in telegraph offices and primarily handled commodities reports, news reports, and personal messages.

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