Once upon a time, before railroad communications entered the electronic age, this was a regular occurrence at depots through the U.S. A Southern Railway station agent at Anniston, Ala. had just set up the train orders for a manifest freight, whose crew would "hoop them up" as the train passed. Centralized Traffic Control, radios and computers have since mostly relegated this classic task to railroad history.

Photographed by Thomas McCann, June 20, 1981.
Added to the photo archive by Thomas McCann, December 19, 2006.
Railroad: Southern.

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