N&W Practice on Passenger Car Ventilation

[NW Mailing List]

Would they have used a transom window hook on a pole?  Transom
windows were really common for early 1900s architecture, would
have been readily available, and common enough not to get mentioned.
Toney Minter

NW Mailing List wrote:
>        The early operating Rule Books made it clear that the trainmen on
> passenger trains were responsible for lighting and adjusting the oil
> lamps and handling the ventilation in coaches, as well as the coal
> stoves.
>
>
> Much, much to my chagrin, I do not recall seeing an N&W coach or Pullman
> which had oil illumination and clerestory ventilators.  (Such may have
> been used on the Blacksburg Branch mixed trains, but they transcended my
> youthful observational skills.)
>
>
> So, yesterday's Steamtown release of a 1932 photograph of the interior a
> Lackawanna coach raised a question.
>
>
> With those clerestory ventilators up so high, the trainman obviously needed a
> pole with a hook (or similar) device on the end, for releasing the latches and
> raising and lowering the metal doors.
>
>
> I never saw reference in any N&W literature to such a device or tool for
> use by the trainmen.  Have you seen such...?  What were they
> called?  Were they a standard item which the trainman picked up at the
> beginning of each run, like markers, lanterns and flagging equipment?
>
>
> ----  abram burnett,
> Purveyor of Alpha-Turnips
>
>
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