Before radio how did headend crew communicate with the conductor/brakemen in the caboose?
Whistle signals. If the train was short enough, hand signals could be used. Some places a third brakeman was assigned to relay hand signals from the middle of the train.
Back when equipment had running boards and employees were permitted on them, a brakeman could always walk between the head and rear ends. If it was unsafe to do so, and all else fails, they could stop and wait for the conductor to walk up and find out what’s wrong.
If the rear end couldn’t get the head end’s attention, they could always pull the air.
Jeff
Well…I guess there wasn’t alot of chit chat back in those days… [swg]
Some of the stories I’ve heard from the then old timers when I started suggest that a lot of conductors and engineers never spoke to each other, except by hand/lantern signs. I know of one local crew where the train crew ate in one cafe and the engine crew in a different one (in the same town).
I believe most of the conversations were “Over the tops” relayed by the brakemen.
A lot of them didn’t like each other, that’s for sure, and there was a definite division between the engine crews and the train crews. If a young brakeman was seen talking to a member of the engine crew off duty, some other crew member would want to know what he was hanging out with “them” for.
In later years, before conductors were assigned radios, some of them would carry walkie-talkies and give one to the head brakeman, with instructions that he turn it on if they stopped someplace. That way, he could tell them why they were stopped or what they were going to do.
If the caboose stopped with a lineside phone nearby, the conductor would go to the phone and see what was up. They generally didn’t like to get too far from the caboose, because one never knew when they might unexpectedly leave.
And Fusee’s. I remember watching switching at Irricana AB when I was a kid (1956-65) and the amount of information they could transmit with hand and arm gestures was amazing. It wasn’t just forward and back, they had to cut cars in and out, spot cars within a foot or so for loading from the spouts at the grain elevators, and my favorite, when they would kick a car down one track and the brakemen would jump from a moving car and turn the switch so the rest of the train would go down the other track. I read a few years ago where that proceedure is a severe safety violation now!
AgentKid
I have a framed antique photo (b&w) of a Mississippi Central “unit train” of Oakland automobiles (two autos per extended wood, outside-braced box car - 26 cars) being pulled by a single 2-8-2 hanging in my spare bedroom. The date is Feb. 4, 1931 and the train originated in Pontiac, MI and is destined for Shreveport and thence to the west coast. On the running boards on top of the first car behind the locomotive is a man wearing an ordinary fedora hat - he looks like a railroad detective but I don’t know for sure. The train is certainly well underway from the appearance of the trailing steam - it’s a “hot shot” freight that reached Shreveport in 62 hrs.
Everytime I look at that photo I’m glad I didn’t work for the railroads back then.
Was that because the train was so long the engine was at Dora’s Diner and the caboose was at Clara’s Kitchen?
That reminds me of a story one of the instructors from Conductor’s school told us. He was working at the time as a conductor between Proviso and Clinton. The rear brakeman was a new man, qualified but still learning the ropes. They were stopped for some reason that I forget. The conductor started walking for the head end.
The train starts to pull again and by the time the waycar gets close, the speed is too fast to safely board. He yells to the rear man, “Don’t leave me,” intending for the rear man to have the train stop. Instead of calling the headend on the radio or pulling the air, this guy gets off the moving waycar. So they have to walk a ways to the nearest dispatcher’s phone where they arrange for the next train going in the same direction to stop and pick them up. I think the new guy got quite a lesson that day.
Jeff
PS, since this was a C & NW story, I used the term “waycar” for caboose. For those that don’t know what a waycar is.
I actually remember hearing that story when I went to Engineer school (back in '75); of course, since I was going to work on the Wisconsin Division, the story was purported to have happened between Proviso and Butler.
We still use hand signals for most of our runaround moves. It’s entirely possible that we’ll have two trains at the station, and it can be confusing on the radio.
We’ve done “radio free” days, using the radio only for those things where it’s absolutely necessary.
Our use of hand signals is sometimes a problem for new-to-us volunteers who have worked on other railroads. Very often they’ve relied entirely on radios and we have to completely train them on use of hand signals.
There were signals that designated various tracks, too, usually a lantern run the length of your trunk (body) meant going to the main. There were other signs that stood for other tracks. In small towns, when the local showed up, the agent would come out and signal to the crew what tracks they were going to work.
If you can do your work without using the radio, that’s a plus.
…I’ve heard Ed {Houston}, say when communicating via radio one must always ID by number, etc…so it is not confused with another crew…
I remember being shown (not taught, unfortunately) a set of hand signals that could quickly convey any numeral. You had separate hand signals for set and release on the air tests (translatable to lantern signals at night). If the distance got too great for a lantern to be seen, you’d break out a fusee.
Whistle signals also conveyed messages to the hind-end crew from the front. If an engineer knew he was going to be stopped for a while, he’d blow a long and three shorts to have a flagmen protect the rear of the train. Four or five long blasts (depending on direction) called the flagman back.
You wouldn’t believe the variety of hand signals I get when the pin-puller wants the slack run in. Some folks want me to “back 'em up”, others want me to “set 'em up”, and still others just hold up a hand. Usually matters not a whit, because I’m anticipatin’… And if the slack doesn’t go in when the pin-puller calls for it, he checks with the conductor to see what he’s doing wrong.
You also don’t ever see the hand signals the pin-pullers used to get to tell us where the engine was going after the completion of the shove (conductor would tell the engineer over the radio; engineer would signal the pin-puller on the ground). So we had signals for “out the main”, “out the back”, and “tie up”. Now, of course, the conductor just radios the RCO with the move.
I heard the same story when I went through school in West Chicago There was also a story from out west where there was a long upgrade horseshoe curve and the conductor needed to talk to the headend crew so he stepped off the waycar walked across the cut caught the lead engine talked to the headend and the stepped off the unit and waited for the waycar to come to him and got back on AHH the old days Larry
I don’t know if it was universal terminology, but on the Milwaukee, hand signals were called signs, whether with or without a lantern. Does anybody know if there was ever a comprehensive list of signs illustrated in published book form? There must be hundreds of hand signs. There was one for every number, plus one for every common move or procedure. It was a whole language. And they were not all the same from one railroad to another. The Milwaukee and the C&NW used different number signs, for instance.
I forget now, but what did throwing a lit fusee about twenty feet straight up in the air mean? I think it had a couple different meanings, depending on the situation.
The problem isn’t usually identification, it’s having two trains moving at the same time and having important messages walked over. We’ll usually go to another channel (we have two available - one for “road”, one for “yard”) as quickly as possible when we’re headed out for a run so the train working in the station can use “yard” channel.
When did the practice of a brakeman on running boards end?
That had to have been extremely dangerous.
ed
In our yard, it was the unofficial end of an “all together” signal, when a track was coupled for pulling out of the bowl. Not the safest thing in the world to do with a fusee! I always just extinguished mine.
MP173 wrote the following post at 08-26-2008 9:43 AM:
When did the practice of a brakeman on running boards end?
That had to have been extremely dangerous.
I can’t say for sure but I know it was still going on in about 1970 but by 1972, it had been made illegal by safety rules…