Head end brakeman-steam era

Wed Apr 29 19:14:40 EDT 2020

Gordon,
Lucky you to have that chance on an Emma. Beautiful engines and shame one wasn't saved. Proud men and their machine. Wonder what color those flags are? White? Green?
Roger HuberDeer Creek Locomotive Works 

    On Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 03:47:23 PM CDT, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org> wrote:  

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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