Head end brakeman-steam era

[NW Mailing List]

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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