BTW, I wonder now how many people hearing that line in the “City of New Orleans” song (“passengers will please refrain…”) understand what it means.
One thing I do miss is the pleasant light percussion sound from the trap cover in the toilets of a roomette in a “heritage” sleeper. Very soothing at night.
Speaking of songs, I just remembered this one! [:$]
https://lyricstranslate.com/en/oscar-brand-humoresque-passengers-will-please-refrain-lyrics.html
I’m 90 myself, but fortunately don’t have to wear glasses. This discussion has given me a whole new appreciation for railroad track workers. But I rode trains, mostly Frisco, from the 1930s to the '50s and never smelled or saw anything that looked like sewage in any of the stations I was in, including St.Louis, Kansas City, Chicago, the big cities of the East, and my hometown of Springfield, Mo. I think other railroads did what the Frisco did in that time, lock the toilet doors before going into a major stop. My father was a Frisco employee from 1909 to 1958 in the offices at Springfield, but once was sent out on the lines to find errant freight cars, I think in reponse to the car census ordered by the federal government when it took over the carriers during World War I. That was when he learned to step carefully on the tracks out in the countryside and also when he got tired of small town boarding houses with bugs and bad food. He was drafted another time in the 1920s to help clean out boilers in Oklahoma when shop workers were on strike. He said it was tough, dirty work for office workers, and they did not dare go into town where the strikers were hanging out.
Crossing picket lines (scab[tdn]) may be hazardous to your health.
I got that beat. My dad was a tax attorney for internal revenue during the great depression! [:S] I wish I could have talked to him about what it was like. Can you imagine being the “revenuer” that had to foreclose on some unfortunate family’s farm? Crossing a picket line sounds tame to me compared to throwing somebody off their land. Don’t get me wrong, my dad was no Simon Legree. He would have helped every way he could and I’m sure in ways he wasn’t supposed to. [;)] But man! Those first tense moments making contact with the new “case number” must have taken guts!
It’s easy to understand how the Great Depression thoroughly spooked the generation that lived through it and to a lesser extent the generation that came after. Cataclysm is the best description I can give for it.
I recall some of the Pullman heavyweight cars I’ve been in and there was usually a window lifter as standard equipment located in the linen locker. It was a wood lever with a hinged, leather-covered pendulum like affair that rested on the window sill. I believe there was a brass plate with ridges on the “business end” that engaged the finger lift of the sash. I’ll see if I can dig up a photo.
I do recall some trainmen locking the annex doors just before arriving in a station. If the layover was going to be a while I recall some cars would get “honey buckets” placed under the waste chutes. I don’t know what craft was in charge of the honey buckets, perhaps the least-senior car inspector?
Here are the paragraphs mentioning the windows and the “window Jack”:
In addition to stations, the annex toilets were locked while passing municipal water supply sheds and military bases (?) apparently GIs were sometimes marching along the rights-of-way, perhaps.
Pullman_Toilet by Edmund, on Flickr
The Pullman “Deodorizer Jug” was also a fixture in each car. I just wonder what the recipe was for the deodorizer “juice”?
Regards, Ed