Head end brakeman-steam era

[NW Mailing List]

Jimmy Lisle gave a good explanation.  A number of states had full crew laws for freight trains: 5. The tender doghouse seemed to be most common for the headend brakeman.  PRR did it.  Interesting that SP did not have them, but their subsidiary T&NO which operated in Texas did.  That looked odd with a doghouse mounted off center on a Vanderbuilt tender.  B&O built an extension on the fireman's side of the engine cab for a brakeman's seat. 
 --Rick Morrison
      To add to what Ken has said, the head end brakeman's job was to cut the engine or engine and cars away from the train when having to do switching or yarding the train. He would handle what switches needed to be thrown and relay hand signals while the rear brakeman handled coupling/uncoupling cars. He may also be the one to go to the phone box when the train was stopped at a signal to get instructions from the dispatcher. So, the head end brakeman needed to be...on the head ed of the train.

      Now, if you have never been in the cab of an N&W locomotive, there, for all intents and purposes, is no where for anyone but the engineer and fireman to sit. So, the doghouse is where the head brakeman rode, unless he wanted to stand up, sit on some hard steel or help the fireman out if the coal needed to cut down to the stoker auger in the tender.

  Jimmy Lisle


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