Some railroads handled train orders better than others, rules vary from railroad to railroad, making some of the statements by TOD applicable on some roads and not others. He gave an example of some good train order dispatching, and it worked, however if something should have gone wrong with that lengthy move he designed for the detour he could have had a mess, especially if the railroad in question required train orders to only be copied by operators. My great uncle worked for a railroad that had such a mess come up and train orders had to be driven by auto to each train because "train orders may only be copied by qualified operators in direct contact with the dispatcher." I talked to a couple of dispatchers today that like track warrants better than train orders one noted---"if the DS you follow isn't all that sharp, you can undo his mess a lot easier under the track warrant system, with train orders you could have been stuck with it for the entire shift, especially if most of your train order stations had closed for the day". Studies have shown that train crews follow moves better when they get "spoon fed" information by track warrant, as opposed to a lengthy train order that covered the whole subdivision with multiple meets and wait at instructions. There is also some truth to the train orders being timetable based, employees tended to follow the daily schedule out of habit, even though a train order annulled the timetable schedule to run a train as an extra, there was always the risk, as many an investigation found, that someone would fall into the habit and forget the timetable wasn't in effect for that movement. I don't say one is safer that the other, most safety depends on the employees being alert to what's going on and paying attention to the matters at hand. As for time slipping. I recall when BN attempted to issue train orders to trains by radio, the telegraphers union issued a letter stating that any telegrapher or qualified operator who heard ANY train order issued over the radio could time slip it. They were to copy the order as it was issued to the train and staple that order to each timeslip. One train order issued recieved over 100 timeslips as it was issued in an area covered by a radio repeater that carried the message over a wide area. I don't recall how that mess was settled. Also, as a point of clarification, Track Warrants are also repeated back to the dispatcher just as train orders were. Another point about reducing the number of hands involved, hand copied train orders caused frequent problems in my day when train crews couldn't read the operators handwriting on the flimsies. Only a few railroads required all train orders to be typewritten, hand written orders were common to the end on most railroads. Train crews can usually read their own handwriting, even if no one else can (and the fill in the blank system eliminates just how much actually has to be written). BTW, the railroad that I worked for when track warrants came in started with a computer based system. You will also find that there are a lot of people who lost their trackside operators jobs that will always say train orders were better simply because the carry a strong resentment of the jobs being eliminated and will carry that resentment to their grave.