"To Strike Is No Remedy ...

To quit is starvation, and to continue is death; not immediately perhaps, but inevitable if he remains long enough in the service."

EF O'Shea, Brotherhood of Railroad Brakemen. 

A fraternal-financial organization with 15,000 members in 1890.

*  *  *

This post gives a short sample of the testimony given to the US Senate's Interstate Commerce Committee in 1890. It follows my earlier look at railcar construction in the late 1800s. During that period, the obvious necessity of developing consistent safety standards for North American railways was receiving widespread attention. 

In 1863, Ezra Miller had patented the Miller Hook to help prevent passenger car telescoping during a collision or derailment. It was reviewed in a previous post.

Ezra Miller Saved Lives

In 1873, EH Janney had received a patent for his most recent coupler innovation. This patent introduced the movable 'knuckle'. 

Just reading the testimony before the Committee provides a vivid image of the deplorable safety conditions for railroad employees. 

The shocking loss of life in passenger train accidents was easily presented in the newspapers so it would receive the attention it deserved from the politicians and railroad officials. However, the lethal working conditions for running trades employees in freight service - with most citizens being unable to imagine or identify with their plight - was a more persistent area of regulatory neglect. 

In testimony, it was estimated that 1 in 5 brakemen and conductors would survive their careers to 'die a natural death'. 

*  *  *

It would take the efforts of a social reformer who served as Iowa's Railroad Commissioner from 1883 to 1888 to focus the attention and action of the US Congress on the issue. While the early, relatively short railroad lines had come under state jurisdiction, the growth of railroad company systems far beyond state lines required the oversight of people seeing the 'big picture' of railroading. 

from: History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; Random House.

Lorenzo Coffin (1823-1915) was one of the people responsible for the eventual development of the Railroad Safety Appliance Act.

Appropriately, Coffin is the first witness as the testimony begins.

The 'power brake' is differentiated from the manual train brake then in use which was applied by brakemen running along the tops of cars to apply handbrakes. One witness takes care to distinguish between a power brake and an automatic brake. Today, we would expect an automatic air brake system to create an Emergency application in the event the train line was broken in some way - without it being initiated by the engineer. 

In some of the testimony regarding the formal testing of early air (and other) brake systems, a witness speaks of riding in one of the 50 boxcars travelling down the 1% grade used by the test train. The violent run-in of slack caused the riders to be thrown against the leading end of the boxcar. Some riders had taken the precaution of surrounding themselves with pillows ... but pillows and all still made the sudden trip forward. It seems likely that experimental straight air systems were also being tested ... and the slow propagation of the straight air through the train line would be a very effective way of creating such violent slack action.

The 'automatic coupler' in its simplest terms meant that a brakeman did not have to stand between cars during coupling - that the coupler 'dropped the pin' automatically as the brakeman stood safely outside the rails and watched.

*  *  *

Here are some of the defects in the design of railroad freight cars identified in the testimony.

In searching through my books, I have seen hundreds of triangular 'cowcatcher' pilots from the late 1800s with their hinged link and pin coupling bar in the centre. The 3/4 front view of trains has always been extremely popular. However, photos showing the rear of a tender, or the end of freight cars are relatively rare. 

from: The Central Pacific & Southern Pacific Railroads; Lucius Beebe; 1963; Howell-North.

Above, at Promontory, Utah in 1869 is an example showing many of the design shortcomings of freight cars. You can see a coupler pocket into which a link has been inserted, with the pin dropped to hold the end of the link in the coupler pocket. A brakeman coupling another car would insert that link into the approaching pocket and drop another pin to secure it there.

Braking system: You can see the narrow roofwalk and the handwheel at the roof to apply the 'train brakes' when they are called for by the engineer's whistle signal. At the very bottom of the handbrake shaft is a chain which will wrap around the shaft as it is turned. The chain is connected to links/levers which will draw the brake shoes into contact with the treads of the wheels. The large transverse wooden bar below the coupler is the brake beam. At the left end of the brake beam, thanks to the sunlight, you can see the left brake shoe which will be applied to the left wheel tread.

Above the coupler pocket, and bolted to it, is a heavy 'deadwood' (probably a slang term). The deadwood is a sturdy piece of wood providing a strong connection between the coupler pocket and the car frame. 

Why automatic couplers are needed: An identical car is approaching the (imaginary) brakeman, standing beside the coupler pocket of the car above. With a pin in hand, he is ready to insert that link and drop the pin into the approaching pocket. Assume the momentum of the movement approaching the car above will push the standing car back two or three feet ...

1. You (you have become the brakeman) stand beside the stationary coupler pocket, align and skilfully insert the link into the approaching pocket and quickly drop the pin.
2. Avoid getting your hands or fingers crushed between the link, the two coupler pockets and the pin.
3. As the cars move two or three feet, walk with them, so the approaching brake beam does not catch your ankle and break it, or cause your legs to become trapped under the approaching car.
4. Keep your torso back so it is not crushed between the deadwoods as they approach each other.
5. You may prefer to keep one foot outside the rail so you can quickly shift away from the cars if something goes wrong. However, if you adopt this position and fall, your body and limbs will land on the rail in front of the approaching wheel.
6. Become proficient at this act so you can perform it at night, in the rain, by the light of a dim coal oil lantern.

*  *  *

from: Railroad Album; John O'Connell; 1954; Popular Mechanics.

The lovely illustration above shows two different designs of car end appurtenances. The upper design shows deadwoods (or perhaps metal 'bumpers', in this case) which are almost flush (if viewed in a side profile) with the contact face of the coupler pocket. A brakeman would have to be particularly skilful to perform a coupling pin drop and extract his arm so it was not caught if the second car had identical deadwoods/bumpers.

On the lower image, you can see a brakeman walking with the approaching movement. The link is raised, ready for insertion into the stationary car. Then the pin will be dropped into the stationary car's coupler pocket. At least in this case, the deadwoods pose less of a crushing hazard than those in the upper design.

*  *  *

from: History of Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; Random House.

Again, here is detail from a photo taken during the construction of the Union Pacific as a stone bridge is being constructed by masons. Beneath the straddling man, you can see the link and pin couplers and the two pins inserted into them. This image shows that the faces of the two coupler pockets are in direct contact with each other. This illustrates the crushing hazard between the coupler faces ... the brakeman's hand must occupy that space between those faces as he inserts the link.

*  *  *

I will likely continue with this topic in the future. 

Below is the correct name and link to the archive.org document I have found so interesting. 

One could analyze it for years ... but I probably won't go that far.

Automatic couplers and power brakes

US Congress, Senate, Committee on Interstate Commerce

https://archive.org/details/automaticcouple00commgoog/page/n7/mode/1up

*  *  *

As you'll notice, the data below (Page 6 of testimony) has been compiled by Lorenzo Coffin.

The Master Car Builders origin and elaboration below is interesting. The term appears in the Science of Railways (circa 1900 - a decade after this testimony) as an entire 400+ page volume is dedicated to standard car design based on the standards of the Master Car Builders.

It was funny to discover that MCB is a term of solemn significance in railroad history. In the 1980s, I was privileged to visit a local 'dream' layout - lots of brass steam locomotives, etc. The owner was referred to with appropriate awe because he had completed the necessary peer-reviewed exercises to be formally recognized (I presume in HO) as a 'Master Car Builder'.

All the different types of Janney couplers will be illustrated in a future post. 

In testimony, railroad officials generally pointed out that air brakes were not practical to use with 50-car trains unless there were Janney-type couplers because of the significant slack action created by long consists of link and pin. Their opinions for Janney-type implementation ran the gamut from continued laissez-faire to immediate federal regulation. 

A problem I had not considered was the 'supply chain' issue and the need to avoid rushing out and buying just any Janney-style couplers. The railroads wanted and needed good quality, durable Janney-style couplers (estimated conversion cost per car: close to $100 in 1890 dollars) and the skilled labour to complete the changeover in a reasonable period ... of YEARS. There were more than one million freight cars in service in the US in 1890. 

Another problem involved our poor brakemen again. Testimony stated that it was significantly more dangerous for a less-experienced brakeman to step in between two freight cars when one car had the usual non-standardized link and pin appliance, and the other had a non-standardized Janney-type. This more dangerous condition would persist for years during the conversion period. (In old photos, you'll notice that early Janneys often had a notch in the knuckle. The link would go into that notch and the pin was dropped down the hole in the knuckle to secure it.)

One of the officials was asked if he knew about the state of affairs concerning brakes and couplers in Canada and he had no idea.

ICC 1930 Tank Car Regulations (Flammable)

The 5 x 7 inch booklet from which these regulations are taken is 443 pages long. Although there is some overlap with other types of hazardous goods, I have tried to focus on the regulations covering tank cars used for the transportation of flammable liquids. All images in this post are from this booklet, except for the tank car photo.

Early in the age of petroleum, crude oil would have been transported in wooden barrels or circular, covered wooden vats mounted on tank cars. Titusville (1859), Pennsylvania; and Oil Springs (1858) and Petrolia (1866) in Canada were the sites of the first major efforts in North America to commercialize petroleum production.

While these two international rivals sometimes debate which location was technically 'first' ... it was in 1854 at Bibrka (in today's southeast Poland) that Ignacy Łukasiewicz, a Polish polymath, first obtained petroleum in its natural state, distilled it and invented the kerosene lamp. 

In 1854 Łukasiewicz said: "This liquid is the future wealth of the country, it's the wellbeing and prosperity of its inhabitants, it's a new source of income for the poor, and a new branch of industry which shall bear plentiful fruit."

The industrializing world was ready for petroleum products which could more cleanly and effectively produce light and lubrication - replacing less satisfactory oil and fat substances derived from animals.

Back then, the lighter fractions of oil (like gasoline) had no practical use. The very first light horseless carriages which burned petroleum in an internal combustion engine were only being invented by Carl Benz as the last spike of the CPR was being driven. After Benz's earliest inventions, practical vehicles which could climb hills or be driven on typical city roads were at least a decade in the future.

Consider, then, that as the first crude oil was being transported in the late 1800s, crudes which were higher in lighter crude fractions (again, like gasoline) constituted a nasty, unprofitable safety hazard for the refinery workers and railroaders who had to handle them. By the time this booklet had been published in 1930 by the Interstate Commerce Commission, hundreds (and more likely thousands) of workers had been killed or suffered debilitating burns through accidents, ignorance and the inadequacies of early tank car design.

from: GATX, A History of the General American Transportation Company, 1898-1948; Ralph C Epstein; 1948; North River Press.

Colour-blindness, Visual Acuity, Hearing Tests - 1897

Safety rules are written in _____.

As the railroad network expanded across the United States in the late 1800s, state regulation of local railroad activities resulted in a patchwork of safety standards. Railroad companies had crossed state lines and thus were engaged in interstate commerce. 

Link and pin couplers, individual rooftop handbrakes on freight cars for train control, and the lack of proper standardized grabirons for brakemen and conductors made railroad employment a very unsafe occupation. Of course, this had spillover effects for members of the general public travelling on passenger trains.

from: Railroads in America; Oliver Jensen; 1975; American Heritage.

Railroad Superintendent, Inspector of Steam Boilers - a cartoon from 1883.

Eventually, Congress acted in 1893, bringing forth the Railroad Safety Appliance Act:

An Act to Promote the Safety of Employees and Travelers upon Railroads by Compelling Common Carriers Engaged in Interstate Commerce to Equip Their Cars with Automatic Couplers and Continuous Brakes and Their Locomotives with Driving-wheel Brakes, and for Other Purposes.

Railroads had 7 years to bring themselves into compliance with the law.

The Interstate Commerce Commission collated and maintained comprehensive railroad safety statistics.

Regulating railroad safety after years of 'non-interference'
was an overdue exercise in the late 1890s

*  *  *

Another interesting safety development of this time period ... the first Standard Code ... was published in July 1889. In its modern day incarnation, this was the master standardized rulebook language promulgated by the Association of American Railroads. It could be adapted to suit the needs of local railroads - including those in Canada. It promoted standardized safe practices to protect property and human life. 

... A key benefit of this type of continent-wide exercise was that individual railroads did not have to 're-invent the wheel' after one serious accident on their own railroad. Rule revisions necessary because of serious accidents, new technology (eg. the telephone), or to employ equally effective but less cumbersome safety rules ... could be reviewed and adopted before a particular railroad, itself, had a crisis.

*  *  *

Testing Vision and Hearing for Railway Employees

Having preserved this fragile artifact for quite a while, I am glad to finally be discharging my responsibility to it. It is a reprinted section from a medical textbook on the eye. You can find this chapter within several versions of the textbook available on archive.org. But the full medical textbook is about structure and diseases of the eye.

A little over 40 years ago, I was fortunate to briefly see, and work in, a perfect example of an isolated railway town - Schreiber, Ontario. Back in 1977, the entire division was run from the CPR station there. The superintendent, his staff and his official car; the dispatchers; carmen, and everyone and everything else you can imagine as being necessary in the diesel age ... remained in this single-purpose town. As I've mentioned before, we were told it had the highest per capita income of any town in Ontario because of the union and management jobs concentrated here.

A classroom instruction program for new spareboard trainmen has just started. Instruction was provided by a freight conductor. Before beginning one's employment, vision testing and a physical exam by the local doctor were required. Among other things, the doctor inspected your spine - looking for any signs of disc problems which might get in the way of changing coupler knuckles in complete comfort.

I can't remember if hearing was checked by the physician or at the division office. Good hearing was important - whether you were communicating via radio ... (in the old days) listening for an approaching whistle at a siding's mile board ... or being aware of your surroundings and the nearly-silent ringing of a kicked car's wheels as it approached you in the darkness of a yard.

Eighty years after the following supplement on sensory testing was produced, the visual exam was considerably less complicated. Individually, we presented ourselves at the division office upstairs and an employee trained in the process checked our vision ...

The acuity part consisted of reading a standard eye chart and (probably) reading text in various sizes of print - all without glasses ... like a standard optometry test.

... They didn't simulate completing a Rule 264/266 form with a pencil (pencils don't freeze), working at a plywood daffodil telephone box, wearing a wire 1940s headset, illuminated by a battery trainman's lantern. If you were doing this because your train was blocking the main line, it would be an inconvenient time for the employer to discover that you couldn't see or hear well.

Railroaders were always looking for distant objects ... such as signals; switch targets and switch point alignment; and locomotive, car and signal numbers. If your unaided distance vision was not good enough, you would not be hired.  Obviously, lots of people wanted to be spareboard trainmen and the CPR could take their pick of people with perfect vision.

*  *  *

An engineer comes around a curve at speed.

On the track ahead, one these displays is seen.

The engineer would have two very different reactions

... illustrating the need for uncompromised colour sense.

from: Uniform Code of Operating Rules; CPR; 1951.

*  *  *

Rule 99 illustrates the need to have
visual acuity, acceptable colour sense and good hearing.

from: Operating Rules; CNR, Grand Trunk, Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific, Central Vermont Railway; 1929.

*  *  *

Getting Back to Schreiber ...

It was the colour sense test that was the most interesting to me, and the most surprising - because I never pictured Casey Jones as a big knitter. It is estimated that up to 8% of males (with northern European genetics) are colour-blind. The testing employee opened up a shoe box filled with small windings of yarn in a very wide variety of colours. He picked up a bundle and asked me what colour it was, repeating the process until I had satisfied him that I'd be able to correctly perceive the colour light 'searchlight' signals, the flags marking slow orders, blue carman's flags, and so on.

Having been through that testing process, I was interested in purchasing and preserving this frail 'artifact' when I saw it 20 years later. Back in its day, it would have been important to railway officials studying ways to make their operations safer ... beyond using air brake systems, Janney-style couplers, and other safety appliances.

*  *  *

The Practical Examination of Railway Employés as to
Color-Blindness, Acuteness of Vision and Hearing

William Thomson MD, 1897

Here's the author:

American ophthalmologist, born January 28, 1833,
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; died August 3, 1907.

http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/2203.html

This scientific paper becomes rather medically dense as you go through it. I have summary paragraphs preceding the page image - so you can decide if you want to read more detail and understand the historical issues and challenges. Their testing protocol is much more involved than my Schreiber experience ... but it doesn't hurt to begin with tight procedures and then loosen things up later.

Near the end, there is a lot of medical and process information, and I don't attempt to summarize it. Decades from now, perhaps some ferro-ophthalmolo-historiographer may find it and decide it is interesting ... you're welcome.

There are some point form sections and implementation details which you might find interesting. 

At the end of this post, I have some images to show different aspects of signalling to make things a little more interesting for readers who persevere through my effort here ...

The issue arose at the International Medical Congress of 1881, in London - how to use medically-developed testing methods for vision. This was needed for signallers and lookout men, on land and sea, to insure the safety of life and property on railways and ships.

There was a need to develop simple tests for colour sense. In Europe, it seemed that governments would set standards and have medical professionals administer the tests. In England, railways were reluctant to agree to use this system.

However, how would this system work when a railway operated through different legal jurisdictions, each with their own laws? 

Consequently, the author worked to develop a system which could be used by non-medical people to perform examinations. A trial of this was done on the Pennsylvania Railroad. 

In Connecticut, railroads were concerned that a state-run system might result in the immediate discharge of 15% of their operating employees. How would the railroads deal with this loss of experience and expertise?

The advantage of a railroad company-based system, using non-medical staff for the initial tests, seemed more appropriate. Any problems requiring medical interpretation could then be forwarded to the railroad company's supervising medical authority in charge of the testing program. Employees would be tested for the following abilities:

1. To see objects at a distance and to read forms.
2. To identify the colours used in day and night signals
3. To hear sounds as required.

The need to protect skilled railroad employees from discharge because of problems with vision and hearing, and the opportunity to find them alternate employment in the railroad, was an advantage of the railroad-controlled company-wide testing system.

A trial of the author's system was conducted with 1383 conductors, engineers, firemen and brakemen. Of this group, 18% were deficient in visual acuity; 4% (55 employees) were completely colour-blind; 1.5% had hearing deficiencies.

The trial used 150 colour tints. These were assigned numbers to make follow-up by medical staff easier and more uniform.

Above, I avoided altering the colours in the image - but the paper and ink are probably 100 years old.

Below, the colours were changed to better resolve the number plates.

I couldn't find the device to which the marginal note refers.
... Just use a watch, it'll work fine.

*  *  *

Various Signalling Images
... because you made it this far.

from: The Compendium of Signals; Roger FR Karl; 1971; Boynton.

from: Railways Then and Now; OS Nock; 1975; Crown.

Above/Below: Looking west toward Union Station, Toronto, August 1914
This earlier version of Union Station (the highest tower in the distant right) was superseded by the current building.
The towerman at the left activates the crossing barrier, the pith-helmeted 'Bobby' shoos people to safety.
The hip-roofed interlocking tower is seen beside the right support of the signal bridge.
You can see the actuator rods coming from that tower and connecting to the switches.
... the closest rod appears over the head of that worker in the foreground with well-used overalls.

As you can see:
Another long-overdue railway safety change was separating
street traffic from railway traffic on different levels.
This was necessary at cities all over North America.

Below, I've enlarged some signal detail.
Notice the 'lower quadrant' semaphore on the highest mast.
There are many things you can see in the organization of those signals ...
Also notice there are two interlocked dwarf signals at track level below the signal bridge.

from: Railways Then and Now; OS Nock; 1975; Crown.

from: Operating Rules; CNR, Grand Trunk, Duluth Winnipeg and Pacific, Central Vermont Railway; 1929.

from: The Pennsylvania Railroad; Edwin P Alexander; 1947; Bonanza.

from: The Compendium of Signals; Roger FR Karl; 1971; Boynton.

It seems very unlikely that the unique Pennsylvania position light signals eliminated colour sense testing.

You can imagine there were some advantages in using these instead of colour-position signals or searchlight signals.

The PRR considered itself 'The Standard Railroad of the World'

so they probably had a long list of reasons.

Runaways with Freight Trains, BLE 1905

The Railroad Safety Appliance Act of 1893 was passed by the US Congress to provide a uniform national safety standard for US railroads. This law came into effect in a significant way in 1900 ... but various provisions came into force in the period from ... 1894 (drawbar height) ... to 1910 (85% of a train's car brakes must be controlled by the engineer). 

To a limited extent, a patchwork of state standards had arisen for important railroad safety devices such as brakes, couplers, and car grab irons used by train crews during switching. Railroad occupational safety had been a source of concern since at least the early 1870s. 

The national standard applied to railroads engaged in interstate commerce and, as one might expect, it was the Interstate Commerce Commission which was empowered to enforce the law and further regulate the industry.

*  *  *

The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers could be considered to be a trade union as well as a professional association. Deep in my archives lurks one of their periodicals from December 1905 and it offers suggestions on preventing runaways through the competent use of air brakes.

While we might expect that a railroad company would train and instruct its own employees on the proper use of the air brake system, this was a new and evolving technology. The people obtaining significant operational experience with it were the locomotive engineers themselves. During this era of rapid industry growth, very little in the field of railroad technology was staying constant for long.

On the inside front cover of this 'union magazine' is a full-page Westinghouse advertisement. The author of the article, Robert Henry Blackall, was an  Air Brake Association President in 1899. He wrote a catechism on air brakes and was an official of the Delaware and Hudson Railway.

from: Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Journal; December 1905; Cleveland, Ohio. 

An interesting detail in the drawing below is the location of the retainer valve at the roof level. As the brakemen were employed to travel along the car roof walks of the cars to turn the MANUAL brake wheels when called for, it made sense to locate this AUTOMATIC AIR brake system adjustment on their 'usual route'.

Note: Trains run on incredibly low-friction self-steering guideways. A vehicle on rails stopping ... can feel like a car stopping on glare ice. If you can't control a car's speed at the top of an icy hill ... you won't be in control at the bottom - the same is true for trains.

Train air brake system recharging (necessary after a brake application) could be a slow process which depended on a relatively weak air compressor(s) on the steam locomotive increasing whatever pressure was left in its main air reservoir - from this reservoir, through the engineer's complicated brake valve, flowed the original potential energy for the brake system. 

... Where significant grades were to be descended, brakemen would 'turn up' the aptly named retainer valves to slow the release of air from the individual car brake cylinders ... thus keeping the car brake shoes in contact with the turning wheels longer than was normally desirable.

Why? A necessary quirk of the 'automatic air brake' is that the system on each car is charged (or 'powered' or 'armed' - to be more descriptive) by increasing train brake pipe pressure ... counter-intuitively, this also releases the brakes on each car. For the engineer running downhill (working with the air brake valve): adjusting how hard the train's brakes were set a few times during the descent of long hill was often desirable for better train control and to be prepared for emergency stops.

... In the modern era, retainer valves are usually located under the car body and they are accessible at track level only when a train is stopped. Because of advances in technology, there are only a few locations where their use is required today.

from: The Science of Railways; 1891-1900; The World Railway Publishing Co.

... it was very thoughtful and sweet of them to provide a hanger/plug for the otherwise exposed gladhand.