Most railroaders call helper locomotives at the rear of the train “pushers”. I was talking with a friend and we started talking about head-end helpers. I asked him if they had a nickname and he told me " I think head-end helpers are called “snappers”, but he was not sure.
Is he right? If not, is there a slang RR term for head-end helpers?
Snappers was a PRR term.
PRR term for all helpers no matter where they are cut in…
Why would the PRR call them “snappers” ?
I wonder why it did not catch on? It sounds kind of catchy to me. Snappers would be easier to say to describe helpers… at least on the head-end. In stead of saying that there was pushers and head-end helpers and just say the train had pushers and snappers. Easier to explain which ends of the train had helpers on it. But that is just my opinion.
I don’t know…for the same reason that Pennsy referred to Cabooses as “Cabin Cars”?
Having had the opportunity to work in a number of geographically different areas and the territories that were served by different, now ‘fallen-flag’ carriers…each area/carrier has developed their own slang over the years, some of the slang comes to be near other areas as ‘boomer’s’ worked over the different areas/carriers. Some carriers relied on ‘slang’ for their terminology, other carriers shied away from slang and referred to things in more pedestrian terms.
No, for some reason other railroads called cabin cars “cabooses”.
Yes… tongue firmly in cheek. But they are still cabin cars,
My end of the railroad called them slaves.