Dictionary.com says a fusee is a colored flare used as a warning signal for trucks or trains.
I’ll just keep calling them flares thats what it says on the box in the trunk of my car [:P]
I had a long association with both torpedoes and fusees growing up in LaGrange in the 60s. We regularly took them out of engines waiting to be scrapped and played with them. Eventually we stopped- luckily before anybody got seriously wounded. Urban legend had it that a kid in Chicago killed himself when he hit a torpedo with a hammer and the report flew the hammer back into the kid’s head. I sure believed it then.
I’m glad my kids didn’t grow up behind a switchyard because I know me and my friends couldn’t resist the temptation of all manner of mischief- although never to the point of destroying or hurting anyone.
Here’s a question for everybody. In those delinquent days a friend hopped a train and stole a lantern off the back of a caboose. Somebody came out of the caboose and chased him for blocks but didn’t catch him. I always wondered how this crew member got back to his train which kept right on going. So, before cell phones and such, how would a crew member catch back up with a traini f he left it.
I’m sure one of the reasons that torpedoes were discontinued was because they couldn’t be heard in modern cabs. There were at least two cases I know of where crews failed torpedo tests conducted by railroad supervision and the final outcome was that the torpedoes couldn’t be heard. Nothing was done to the crew and the railroad discontinued torpedo tests.
It’s only been the last five or six years that torpedoes weren’t required as part of on-board equipment but FRA regs require at least six fusees be available.
I’ve never heard anyone in the general public call them anything but flares but I’ve never heard a railroader call them anything but fusees.
I’m guessing, Wayno, if that was years ago, either the train wasn’t going much farther and whoever chased the kid knew that, or the guy who came off the train went to a payphone or a railroad block phone and called for a ride or there might have been another train following that he could have caught. Hard to say. I knew an engineer once who jumped off an engine and chased down a kid that threw a rock at him but they had a stop signal coming up and he just stopped back a little ways. Caught the kid and dragged him to his house, too, bet he didn’t throw anymore rocks. Uh, might not want to try that today.
I’ll just keep calling them fusees because thats what it says on the box in the trunk of my mind labled “long gone railroading days” and that they were manufactured in Boonton, NJ less than ten miles from my home.
That must be a regional thing – out here in the wild, wild west where people are allowed by law to carry weapons, cap pistols and BB guns are still sold as toys in Wal-mart, K-mart, Target, Sears, et. al.
Couple short experiences I had w/ torpedos before they were phased out. One night we were building our train together. We had a student who was getting the pratice of pulling pins & kicking cars w/ the condr, I was down in the trk, hooking up air hoses as the cars rolled to a hook. Unknown to me, the condr strapped a torpedo on the knuckle of the next car they were going to kick to me. Man talk about a loud noise I didn’t expect when the cars slammed into the standing cut I was next to. I still owe that guy one. Lol. Anothr time we were on a job and we going to be held for traffic before it was our turn. Our engr was a older dude who was hard of hearing. He kicks back, gets his newspaper out, condr goes out, puts a torpedo on the rail. When it was our time to start moving and we ran over it, our hoghead didn’t have any trouble hearing that day. He thought someone was shooting at us!
Was just curious in starting the thread on this topic.
A friend was talking about a semi-tractor trailer that got “high centered” on a grade crossing here in S.Cal. late one night in a somewhat remote area. The driver of the truck was trying to get in touch with the Sheriffs office and no one knew the number for the railroad to inform them that the trailer was stuck. I think either the local or maybe it was the Amtrak train that hit the trailer.
Told my friend that I thought someone could have gone up track and tossed a fusee and possibly stopped the train before it hit the trailer. The friend said that trains wouldn’t stop for a flare anyhow. I think the Rule book says you’ve got to though.
Before the use of radios, if the flagman was going to be alone on the hind end, some crews would set it up with the engineman that, when starting up after a stop that required flagging, he would pull forward a couple carlengths and stop for a few minutes before proceeding. The flagman would put a cap (torpedo) on the rail under the caboose before going back to flag. When the train pulled ahead the cap would go off alerting the flagman to return to his train, which (hopefully) would be waiting for him.
The idea of pulling forward a couple carlengths was to make sure all the slack was pulled out so that the caboose would move enough to run over the cap.
There were whistle signals to recall the flagman, but with a long train they could not usually be heard, especially if there was backround noise in the area.
Of course, if the conductor was on the hind end, he could see to it that the flagman didn’t get left.
Having grown up in the South, I have no particular objections to them. Daisy sure does make some authentic-looking rifles. And (this could get scary) I understand there are some very well detailed pellet guns that look like specific types of pistols. Here in Chicago everything is verboten, but as the NRA warns, the outlaws sure do have guns! - a.s.
I don’t know what current rulebooks say, but circa 1960 they said that if a person near the track was waving frantically (don’t recall the exact language), it was to be regarded as a stop signal by the engineer. It was certainly likewise with the presence of a burning red fusee. Of course nowadays engineers are just too busy to notice a person waving frantically, so that part has probably been taken out of the rulebook. [;)]
I recall an essay about torpoedoes - I think it was in A Treasury of Railroad Folklore, edited by B. A. Botkin and A. F. Harlow - that ended with a line to the effect that on the proverbial “dark and stormy night”, there was nothing so comforting to the trainmen as a lit lantern with the wick properly trimmed and couple of torpedoes (“guns”) hanging from the frame.
- Paul North.
Speaking of dark and stormy nights, some years ago one of the New Jersey NRHS Chapters put out a publication with an article about a PRR torpedo placing machine at a block station in NJ. IIRC it was east of the Delair Bridge (JORDAN?). I think it was to keep trains from getting by a signal in a heavy fog area.
One of these forums had a discussion about a similar practice in England, where they are called detonators.
Fusees and torpedoes are mentioned in an 1876 rule book I have so they go back a while. Torpedoes were still in use into the 1980’s. I haven’t heard of many accidents to railroaders with torpedoes, but lots of accidents to kids that broke into cabooses and engines and stole them.
When flagging typically a trainman would go back the flagging distance (varied from one to two miles depending on the speed of the territory), set two torpedoes on the engineer’s side rail 150 ft apart, then go back towards the train 1/2 the flagging distance. When recalled the trainman would pop a fusee and drop it then go back to the train. The fusee would burn for 10 minutes, insuring that there was a minimum of 10 minute spacing between trains. If the flagman heard a train coming, he was supposed to put down another set of torpedoes and then start giving stop signals with a fusee, light or flag.
If a train hit a torpedo it would explode. The engineer would have to reduce speed immediately and travel at a restricted speed for the flagging distance, prepared to stop short of a fusee, flagman or train. If they encountered a lit fusee on or near their track, then had to stop before passing it and wait 10 minutes or until the fusee burned out then proceed at restricted speed for flagging distance (some rule books allowed the train to stop and then proceed at restricted speed, without waiting for the fusee to burn out.)
On trains with cabooses, if the train drop below some speed (typically half the subdivision speed) the conductor was supposed to drop lit fusees out the caboose at regular intervals to prevent a train from catching up to them. In addition to trainmen, operators were supposed to be qualified on how to use flagging tools.
Dave H.
.
Someone should be pasting or transcribing these rules IMHO. They involve more than mere trivia; there’s a great deal of wisdom involved. I feel strongly that it will be of some interest to people in the future. Especially if it’s part of a narrative or a biography! - a.s.
"Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?"
from “They Paved Paradise to Put Up a Parking Lot” by Joni Mitchell (1960’s)
Concur, although that’s probably already been accomplished by preserved and archived rulebooks and timetables, etc. As others have noted, all “written in someone’s blood”, so to speak.
Also, they demonstrate a very safety-oriented mindset - with redundancies and alternate or additional precautions thought out and built-in for the inevitable and perhaps frequent "what if ?’ contingencies - that seems to be not too common these days. When dealing with large machinery at high speeds in all kinds of topographic, weather, and other environmental conditions (noise), all precautions must be taken.
- Paul North.
Kootenay Central,
That is excellent information. Very interesting. I would add that fusees could be a useful tool to quickly start a coal fire in the stove of a cold caboose. Six to twelve of them should do the trick, but you wouldn’t want to overdo it.
Well said, Paul. The more the danger, the more the redundancies and alternatives that should be at hand. Has anyone asked: did these involve some manner of early-modern high explosives (maybe modfied nitroglycerin, there must be others), or was it just plain black powder. Gotta keep that stuff dry, which can be quite a struggle in a railroading environment.
Maybe I expect too much of people, but if I had the funds I’d commission a book that has (hopefully the best) elements of often-dry historical arana and as-told-to social history. How to take care of and set fusees properly, say. If you’ve looked at last year’s hit THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS, you know what I mean. It wasn’t dangerous at all, but gave instructions for the kinds of crafts English boys would have been able to do 100 years ago (U.S. lads, too, I reckon) – whittle a whistle, say. I loved it and so did my nephew. Apparently it was fascinating to other readers, too, given its bestseller status. THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG meets FOXFIRE, that kind of thing.
I have heard of persons setting torpedoes all the way around a turntable ring rail. Then start the table in motion. Happy New Year! Every police officer in town went to the roundhouse, but the culprits had scattered by them.
Many engines had in the cab a metal box, with lid, to store torpedoes in. A larger side compartment held fusees.
Is the best way to dispose of all those obsolete Torpedos to just run-over them and detonate them?
Andrew