In the new CT, Chris Burger (I love his series) talks about using a skate to keep humped cars rolling into empty tracks from going out the other end.
What is (was?) a skate, and how does it work?
Thanks, zug.
So the car’s wheel turns the skate into kind of a brake shoe against the rail, while skidding along until the car stops? Are they always used in pairs, across from each other? Seems like just one could cause an imbalance resulting in a derailment.
Yeah, pretty much. There was a video floating around of a railyard across the pond skating cuts of car that were moving at a good clip, but I can’t find it.
Edit: not the one I was thinking of, but it works:
Wow! Those skates squeezed the smoke out of the ties as they slid by !
The thing about skates, as opposed to chocks, is that the wheel rides up on them, so they aren’t likely to get kicked out of the way.
The actual name for these devices “Track Skates” They were one of those items around a railroad that, over time, developed multiple ‘uses’ for many tasks not originally planed for them.
There is a Forum Thread from 2004 titled “Railroad Skates”.
linked @ http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/20075.aspx
A Thread posted by Carl (CShaveRR) explains them in very good detail.
It illustrates a number of ‘other’ uses for the ubiquitous Track Skate, but Carl actually had a designated job at his job @ Proviso Yard. It also illustrates how and why they were so dangerous.
In the early 20th Century and before at railroad yards they employed ‘riders’ {possibly,Hump Riders?) Whose task was to ride rolling cars to close to their ‘stopping point’; jump off, and stop the car with a track skate(s ?).
As Carl pointed out, dangerous work.
I had always thought that hump riders just tightened hand brakes.
They most likely did - on 2nd and subsequent cars switched to a track, to control the coupling speed. However, the 1st car or cut of cars switched to a clear track had to stopped and ‘anchored’ so that subsequent cars could be switched against it.
Skates, in addition to hand brakes, would have been used to slow and stop the 1st car or cut of cars being switched into a clear track.
I sometimes worked as a skateman in B&O’s Connellsville, Pa. hump yard between 1975 and 1977. The whole yard was built on a down grade so if the cars were not stopped they would roll right out the lower end. There were no riders after retarders were installed so the skateman had to place skates on the tracks to stop the cars.
When a cut of cars was to be humped the retarded operator would tell the skateman over a loud speaker system which tracks needed skates. The skateman would place one skate on the north rail of the specified tracks except for one of the tracks that had a battered down rail head that would bind the skate making it impossible to remove. That track got its skate on the south rail. Using only one skate did make one of the wheels slide on the rail probably causing a small flat spot but that was the procedure.
In placing the skates you had to be careful that the flat part of the skate that the wheel hits first was not sticking into the gage side of the track. If it was the wheel flange would hit it and throw the skate off the rail rather violently.
The skateman was supposed to put the skate far enough into the track to stop the cars in the clear and then tie handbrakes on to stop the following cars, but with all the variables it was hard to know where to place the skates. Car weight, bearing type, track conditions, cold weather, wind, speed out of the retarders, etc. all affected how fast the car would be rolling when it reached the skate.
Most skatemen would walk up into the track several car lengths to get on the car and slow it with the handbrake as it approached the skate. Some cars would stop on their own before reaching the skate. Then you had to watch for following cars to hit and move it along while still dealing with cars coming down other tracks.
The skate shanty was located at the lower end of the yard. It was a wooden shed about the size of two telephone booths equipped with a little table, a chair, and a tiny coal stove. Some wint
Did you have any close calls calls, Mark? In the CT article I referenced, Burger said the job was very dangerous, and that a skateman in his yard lost a leg.
I did have one close call due to my inexperience. I had just tied the handbrake on the trailing end of a loaded coal car and saw the next car coming down the track with the handbrake end leading. I thought that I would stay up on the car and just crossover to the oncoming car to tie that brake on when it coupled. I didn’t want to stay between the cars in case the couplers bypassed so I got up on the coal and squatted down bracing my arms against the end of the car. When the oncoming car hit I suddenly found myself on the coal in the second car. All I got was some skinned shins but it could have been much worse had I fallen between the cars. I learned that it’s not good to be on a car when making a coupling.
I don’t think the skateman job was any more dangerous than other yard jobs. Everyone on the railroad has to be aware of what’s going on around them. The skatemen did work alone and did not have radios. If something happened it could be a long time before you were missed.
Mark Vinski
All jobs on the operating side of railroading are dangerous with actions that on the surface may seem innocuous but in reality are life threatening.
I’m not going to go back and look at what I covered before; apparently I did a decent job in my post.
No, the skate jobs were separate from anyone who happened to be riding down from the hump. If you were riding into a clear alley, you hoped that rules had been followed, and the track was properly skated, at the proper distance up into the track. Once the skates stopped you (or at least slowed you down, then it woud be safe to go from car to car of your cut and apply the hand brakes).
If there were no riders, it was the skateman’s job to stop the cars, meaning he set his skates, then walked up to catch the cars rolling in. If he were notified (via the page system, and later by radio) that some heavy cars were coming into the track, he’d tie brakes on those, too, to keep them from pushing the track out.
And that, my friends, is how I had my first and only on-the-job injury. I had skated Track 24, and ridden three loaded cars into the skates, applying brakes on those cars. The “post” I thus created should have stopped anything. But I got a call about another bunch of heavy cars coming down for that track. In those days, a “heavy car” was likely to be a fully-loaded 40-foot box car with grain. Well, I climbed on the first car, climbed up, and started winding that brake. I wasn’t having much luck, and wound up riding those cars right into my post. I was right…those…cars…didn’t…budge! When I hit, I was knocked off the platform, but still hanging onto the brake wheel. My thigh hit something (probably the platform), and that laid it open with a puncture wound…I never have bled like that before or since!