Would such trains always have a five man crew of conductor, engineer, fireman, front brakeman and rear brakeman. What got me thinking about this is the movie Emperor of the North. I don’t recall there being a front brakeman on that train and I wondered if that was accurate or not.
Short answer is yes, a 5 man crew was standard and having a head end brakeman was standard.
Somebody has to line the switch if you want to head into a siding.
Hi John.
It would depend on several factors. Length of train and agreement between railroad and unions. If the train was short enough to see the locomotive from the coupala of the caboose then the rear brakeman would be satisfactory. Union agreements varied between railroads on job responsibilities. As an oiler apprentice in 1976 I was not allowed to do other things that were not on the job roster. Even simple things such as replacing a burnt out light. We would have to get an electrician for that. You didn’t want to create a grievance with another union.
I haven’t seen that movie in about thirty years. Wasn’t it set in the depression era? Layoffs could also have been a factor in short crew size. But then it was a movie.
Pete.
In the movie, I believe it was a fairly short train. In the climactic scene, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin engaged in a fight to the death on the top of the cars. As I recall, they came at each other from opposite ends of the train.
It certainly would have been feasible for the rear brakeman to work both ends of the train. I wondered if agreements at the time would have allowed either the conductor or fireman to do double duty as the front brakeman.
A short time ago I think I read that on very long trains there might be a middle brakeman. I’m curious whether he would have rode on or inside a freight car.
My grandfaher was a railroad machinist from the Teens to the Fifties. He was not allowed to sweep up the shavings and other debris caused by operating a lathe, milling machine, etc. even when it impeded his work. He had to stop what he ewas doing and summon a roundhouse laborer to do it. Seperate union, seperate job description. seperate duties. Railroads were notorious for being strictly organized by craft and not shop - and the unions jealously guarded and fought over their privileges.
Standard crew agreements would have required a head end brakeman. If it were limited to a 4 man crew (Engineer, fireman, conductor, brakeman, which wasn’t a standard crew until the 1980’s) the brakeman would STILL be on the head end. The brakeman would have to be a total idiot to ride on the caboose and walk the length of the train EVERY time the train had to do work or go in or out of a siding.
It’s a movie, its a piece of fiction. A real train would have AT LEAST 5 men on it in the depression era. By the labor contract.
Either the head end or the rear end. Most of the extra brakemen went away around WW1 when air brakes were standard. About the only place they used extra brakemen were in heavy grade territories where retainers had to be set or hand brakes set if the air brakes failed.
Some agreements also had a 6th man, engineer, fireman, conductor, head end brakeman, rear end brakeman, flagman. The designation “head” and “rear” were only descriptive and any of the trainmen (conductor, brakeman, flagmen) could have ridden either end, all could do exactly the same work. Generally the lowest seniority man on the train crew was the head brakeman because they did the most work (as I said before, lining switches and doing set outs and pick ups.)
The last railroads that had “middle brakemen” that I encountered were the Mexican roads in the 1980’s that were required to operate with a 5 main crew plus another brakeman for every 25 cars over 50 or 75 cars, can’t remember which. It was an issue because the US raods wanted to increase the size of grain trains to Mexico, but they were against it because they would have had to add another brakeman.
My favorite movie which I watch annually. Every crew member shown was integral to the story in varying degrees. The 5th crew member was not part of the story so he was omitted.
Talking about real world train crews, what was the next evolution after 4 man crews?
5 man crews : Engineer, fireman, conductor, head brakeman, rear brakeman
4 man crews : Engineer, conductor, head brakeman, rear brakeman
3 man crews : Engineer, conductor, brakeman
2 man crews : Engineer, conductor
RCL crews : Foreman, switchman
1 man crews : Engineer
Unmanned trains : Black box
The last two are possible, but haven’t been implemented to any large extent in N America due to regulatory and labor contract restrictions.
RCL crews also are sometimes Foreman only.
Sometimes a utility would be added, but not always.
The only single-person yard crews we have are beltpack hump jobs.
Extra brakemen on freight or mixed trains would most likely ride in the caboose until they were needed, and the ‘head end’ brakeman might ride there as well if they had a short train, were shoving backward, or if he simply wanted a break from riding in the hot, cramped engine. If needed he could always get back to the head end by going ‘over the top’.
It amazes me how people seem to be trying to find every reason why the head end brakeman wouldn’t be on the head end.
Quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether its hot or cramped or if he’s lonely or whatever. His job is on the head end and if he’s not the fireman has to do the brakeman’s job which means the engineer has to do the fireman’s job, or else under the right circumstances everybody gets fired.
Dave, you seem to be under the impression that every single employee obeyed every single rule and regulation 100% of the time, and were always where they should be.
For some examples of what I was talking about, ‘Classic Trains’ had an article a few years ago written by a new brakeman working a C&NW branchline turn job. He was the head-end brakeman, yet the conductor specifically told him to ride in the caboose for part of the trip (both for a lemonade break and because of where he would be needed for upcoming switching moves), and when they returned to the yard the engineer and fireman put the engine away by themselves, with the fireman lining a few switches as required.
For the opposite, another frequent poster in the ‘String Lining’ thread once told a story about how the conductor had his train make a blind shoving movement to quickly and easily get the entire crew on the head end, again to facilitate upcoming switching moves. He lit a red fusee and stuck it on the rear of the caboose to ‘protect’ the shove (safety first, right?), only for the fusee to fall onto a wood trestle and burn it down.
Another story from the diesel era (can’t quite remember where I read this one, probably in one of the magazines) involves the engine crew blocking the dead man pedal and leaving the engine in low throttle as the train rolled along a relatively flat stretch of track, and then everyone hopped off and got on the caboose for a coffee break and card game (this was on a branchline with bad track and a very low speed limit). When break time was over they would stop the train with the conductor’s brake valve and the head end crew would walk up to the engine. They eventually got caught when a farmer or his wife reported seeing the train rolling along with no one in the locomotive cab.
Oh heck no. I was a a railroad operating officer for 37 years. I have held enough investigations, and taken enough accident reports to know that isn’t true at all.
That’s why one of the leading causes of train derailments and accidents is human causes.
And the reason he had toTELL him to ride the caboose was because his normal position was on the head end.
Yes crews do things that are against the rules and many times they end up badly. But the question wasn’t “how do I model not doing things right?”
My last paragraph was, “Quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether its hot or cramped or if he’s lonely or whatever. His job is on the head end and if he’s not the fireman has to do the brakeman’s job which means the engineer has to do the fireman’s job, or else under the right circumstances everybody gets fired.”
And that’s EXACTLY what all of your examples i
And yet those examples happened, and to some degree similar things continue to happen.
I’ll bet there were a lot more instances that we just don’t know about because nothing happened.
It’s sort of like the older question of where to put the combine or caboose in the train (and do they have to be next to each other?). There might have been rules around this but in reality the crew would probably end up doing whatever was easiest.
The rear brakeman also was the flag man. Unless otherwise relieved for providing flag protection, he would be out flagging when the train stopped.
That being said, a short line with or without a union contract might only have one brakeman. Especially if it’s a one train a day outfit.
Former interurbans that switched to other forms of motive power may only have had one brakeman. A legacy contract when it was an electric operation.
The class ones were allowed, after 1964, to blank out a second brakeman* on branch line trains, even if they worked over a portion of a main line.
*If any trainman working when the agreement was signed had no other assignment available, he could fill the blanked 2nd brakeman,s position. Anyone hired after the signing date could not.
Jeff
This isn’t pertinent to the original question but does illustrate the above point. The daily Ohio Central branchline train from Newark, OH to Mt. Vernon, Oh has started putting a loco on both ends. Typically I see this train with 8-12 cars. There’s no place to turn a loco in Mt. Vernon and having a loco at each end means they don’t have to do a run around and run it backwards on the return trip. I see a variety of locos on that train which tells me they just use whatever is available. The roundtrip is less than 50 miles.
The locomotive on both ends thing wasn’t as popular before the megamergers that idled thousands of engines and flooded the used locomotive market with power.
Prior to that it would have been too expensive to have two engines on a train, it would have been cheaper to have a switch and maintain it than have two engines. After used engines became a dime a dozen, putting two engines on the train became cheaper than maintaining a switch. By the time I retired, the number of engines wasn’t even really a factor in calculating delay costs because there were so many surplus engines there was no real cost to delaying an engine.