I won't disagree with Tom V. about track warrants eliminating jobs. I will say that the dispatcher of 30 years ago, with a timetable and train order operation was less harried than today's track warrant dispatcher. More time to contemplate moves usually improves the whole operation.

When I started dispatching trains and operators had radios but in the dispatchers office we did not. If we wanted to send a train order to a train on the radio we sent it to an operator and they repeated it back and then used the radio to deliver it to the train. Also you did not always need every train to be at an open station before you made changes. It depended on what was being changed.

CTC fueled the decline of the open stations with operators. I will say that with todays traffic volumns a non CTC territory would require many more employees if we still used train orders. I personally feel that checking off numbered boxes is more risky than listening to an operator repeat every word back to the dispatcher as he underlines them in his train order book.