Reference the Fall 2009 issue of Classic Trains, page 82, “Beyond the Training Program” by Robert Siik. In his excellent article, Siik writes of his early railroading experience on the N&W in the Summer of 1978 during a clerical strike. The lead sentence in the third paragraph is:
While every road had its own designations for colored classification flags, my understanding is that red flags typically meant “last section.” Thus, I don’t understand the author’s reference. In this context, how is a red flag and no caboose related? If it was an only train, why even display red flags?
Disregard the previous post. I have come to realize the red flag was on the last car of the train in question, not on the front of the locomotive as I had surmised.
The sentence as written is a little misleading by using “capped”…a cap is usually something on the head (like a cap you wear) or the top of a bottle etc. so I wouldn’t immediately think of it coming at the end rather than the front or head end of the train.
During the clerical strike in 1978, when railroad supervision sort of ran the trains (sorry for the editorial comment), they didn’t use cabooses and did use two and, I believe, maybe even a few one man crews to run the trains. Since they had no end-of-train devices, they used flags. The only end-of-train devices that I would know for sure existed then would have been owned by the Florida East Coast and I don’t know how sophisticated they were then.