This question applies to house (van type) cars with roofwalks and high brake wheels.
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How far down would the brake platform be from the brake wheel?
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I ask because I always assumed a railway worker would stand on the platform and turn the brake wheel. This means the brake wheel center should be about 48 to 60 inches from the platform.
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I have notive on several car the wheel is as low as 36 inches, and I have one that is only 30 inches. On this one the brake wheel almost touches the platform.
In the Model Railroaders cyclopedia, fifth edition on page 116, there is a UP box car 120000 series. Height to brake wheel 14’9". Height to roofwalk 14’ 1 5/8".
I have a period car builders cyclopedia, I’ll check that next.
I checked The Official Railway Equipment Register from January 1943 instead. I sampled several cars from several railroads. I looked only at house cars 40’ feet and less. I found that most had an extreme height clearance between 8-9" above the roof walk. Some had extreme height 18"+. The extreme height can be assumed to be the brake wheel in most cases for box cars.
Don’t forget, too, that not all house cars with staff-type brake wheels used platforms. For those, the brakeman would stand on the car’s roof to operate it, so the brakewheel would be mounted even higher.
A quick look through some of my freight car books showed examples from the Milwaukee Road, Western Pacific, D&RGW, Santa Fe, C&NW, Soo Line, NC&StL, and CB&Q.
Finding images of the B end of a freight car taken head-on is kind of difficult.
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I have a hard time judging measurements in photographs of 3/4 view, or isometric alignment. To make matters worse, almost all pictures of the end are taken from ground level looking up, which makes the platform appear even closer to the brake wheel.
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There are tons of good pictures out there of the sides of freight cars, but the ends are a whole different story.
The books in which I found the examples listed are all part of Speedwitch Media’s “Focus On Freight Cars” series. These are not builders’ photos, but ones taken of in-service cars. The series was begun by Richard Hendrickson, and on his passing, is continued by Ted Culotta, a noted modeller.
The black and white photos show various views of single freight cars, including sides and ends, and often a number of detail shots, too. Text accompanying the photos points out construction features and some background history on the particular class and other related points of interest.
You can download high resolution copies of these photos for your own use and use a photo editing software to crop and enhance some of the less-than-ideal ones to your liking.
Lots of tank cars and billboard reefers here, too.
Climbing up the ladder, you stand with your left foot on the ladder, right foot on the stand, left hand on the above grab iron and the right hand on the wheel. If you really want to “weld it down”, put both feet on the platform and both hands on the wheel and pull up.
As for that staff brake above, you need both feet on the platform. The right foot needs to operate the pall inorder to hold the brake or release it.
I pity the poor guys that had to operate that lever brake. I hated lever brakes as they took forever to wind up. I can’t imagine trying to control a car with one.
Back before there were “ergonomic studies” I’m sure someone figured out that you could get more leverage and maintain your balance better if the bulk of the load, or weight, was at waist-level or below.
I’d rather lift a fifty-pound bag of feed from waist height rather than shoulder height.
You might think having it up high gets you more leverage, but it also greatly increases the chances of overbalancing yourself and falling off the car. Keeping it lower helped you maintain balance when applying force. Plus by the end of the high mounted brake wheel, they had things like “power” brakes which uses gear reduction to increase the force on the brake rods with less force applied to the brake wheel. The REALLY dangerous times were before air brakes, when the brakemen had to run along the roof walks in any kind of weather every single time the train needed to slow or stop. And they didn;t have the corrugated steel that has some chance at gripping shoe soles, either - just wood, smoothed down after years of service. Imagine that, wet from rain, or covered in snow or ice, nd twisting the brake wheel, then using a brake club (basically a heavy stick) for added leverage to tighten down the brakes. One slip and you were over the side (and hopefully not down between the cars). Over the side was bad enough, from a moving train, if in open farm land. On a line carved into the side of a mountain? You were lucky if they ever found your body.
Railroading has always been a dangerous pasttime. My ex father in law, his father was a crew dispatcherat the end of his career. Prior to that he was a passenger conductor, until he lost a leg in an accident. That was I think in the 40’s. Even then, the railroad took care of you - moved you to a job you could do instead of just telling you to take a hike. In earlier days, before automatic grade crossings, many of the crossing watchmen were railroaders injured on the job who could no longer do their old jobs.
The picture that Ed posted is the correct and safest way any other way will be a safety violation.
You always climb a car on the outside ladder then step around to the end ladder and brake wheel stand. You use the side of your foot to climb and never the toe end.
Maybe you didn’t but,that’s how I was taught since the side of your foot put more boot on the ladder then the toe and using the side leads to a lessor chance of slipping.
That man is also a hump rider that had to stand that way while riding the car down the hump…You should have caught that the first time you looked at the photo…
