Head end brakeman-steam era

[NW Mailing List]

Gordon, I hope the crew got a print of that mighty fine photo you took.
Classic RR scene.  John Garner

 

From: NW Mailing List [mailto:nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 3:51 PM
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: Head end brakeman-steam era

 

Of course, some locomotives were designed with a large enough cab to
accommodate two seats on the fireman's side of the cab.  When I rode the cab
of an L&N Class M1 Berkshire No. 1960, several decades ago, from Corbin, KY,
to De Coursey Yard, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, I was able to
rest in a seat behind the fireman's seat.

I am attaching a couple of pictures from that L&N trip for no particular
purpose to this N&W/VGN group than to commemorate a bygone era common to all
steam railroads.  I'm afraid that the names of the L&N crew have long since
been lost.  The photos came out surprisingly well considered that I took
them with an old Kodak camera with a front that pivoted downward so that a
bellows with the lens, shutter release, etc., could be pulled out, a camera
that I borrowed from my grandmother to take to college with me.

Gordon Hamilton

On 4/29/2020 1:57 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:

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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