"Dancing on the Carpet."
The disagreeable features of a freight brakeman's life are chiefly those dependent upon the weather. If he could perform his duties in Southern California or Florida in winter, and in the Northern States in summer, his lot would ordinarily be a happy one, though the annoyance of tramps is almost universal in mild climates, and in many cases takes the shape of positive danger. These vagabonds persist in riding on or in the cars, while the faithful trainman must, according to his instructions, keep them off. In some sections of the country they will board a train in gangs of a dozen, armed with pistols, and dictate where a train shall carry them. Not long ago in Chicago a conductor, while ejecting a tramp from the caboose, was shot and killed by the ruffian.
Trainman and Tramps.
The hardships of cold and stormy weather are serious, both because of the test of endurance involved and the added difficulties in handling a train. The Westinghouse automatic air-brake, which has served so admirably on passenger trains for the past fifteen years, has only recently been adapted and cheapened so as to make it available for long freight trains, but it is now so perfected that in a few years the brakeman who now has to ride on the outside of cars in a freezing condition for an hour at a time will be privileged to sit comfortably in his caboose while the speed of the train is governed by the engineer through the instantaneous action of the air-brake. On the steep roads of the Rocky Mountains, and a few other lines, this brake is already in use.
Braking in Hard Weather.
But "braking by hand" is still the rule. In running on ascending grades or at slow speeds, the brakemen can ride under cover, but in descending grades, or on levels when the speed is high, they must be on the tops of the cars ready to instantly apply the brakes, for the reason that there are generally only three or four men to a long train weighing from 500 to 1,000 tons, whose momentum cannot be arrested very quickly. In descending steep grades, only the most constant and skilful care prevents the train from rushing at breakneck speed to the foot of the incline, or to a curve, where it would be precipitated over an embankment and crushed into splinters. One of the mountain roads in Colorado which now uses air-brakes is said to be lined its whole length with the ruins of cars lying in the gorges, where they were wrecked in the former days of hand-brakes. Even on grades much less steep than those in Colorado the danger of this sort of disaster is one that has to be constantly guarded against. Take the case of a 40-car train descending a 1½ per cent. grade (792/10 feet per mile). Before all of the cars have passed over the summit and commenced to descend, the forward part of the train will have increased its velocity very perceptibly and will thus by its weight exert a strong pull on the rear portion, "yanking" it very roughly sometimes, and if one of the couplings between the cars chances to be weak it breaks, separating the train into two parts. Mishaps of this kind are frequent, and two or more breakages often occur at the same time, dividing the train so that one of the parts—between the two end portions—is perhaps left with no brakeman upon it. The engineman then has the choice of slackening his speed and allowing the unmanageable cars to violently collide with his portion, or of increasing his own speed to such a rate that he is soon in danger of suddenly overtaking a train ahead of him. To avoid this breaking-in-two the brakemen must be wide awake on the instant and see that their brakes are tightened before the speed even begins to elude control. As soon as the whole train has got beyond the summit, and the speed is reduced to a proper rate by the application of the brakes on, say, one-third or one-half the cars, it will perhaps be found that one or two brakes too many have been put on and that the train is running too slowly. Some of them must then be loosened. Or perhaps some are set so tightly that the friction heats the wheels unduly or causes them to slide along the track instead of rolling; then those brakes must be released and some on other cars applied instead; and all this must be done (sometimes for an hour) when the temperature is 20 degrees below zero, or the wind is blowing a gale, just as under more favorable circumstances. A train moving at 20 miles an hour against a wind with a velocity of 30 miles increases the latter to 50, so far as the brakeman is concerned; and if rain or sleet is falling, the force of it on his hands and face is very severe. If we add to this the danger attendant upon stepping from one car to another over a gap of 27 to 30 inches, in a dark night, when the cars are constantly moving up and down on their springs and are swaying to one side or the other every few seconds, we get some idea of, though we cannot realize, the sensations that must at such times fill the minds of the men whose pleasant berth seems so enjoyable on a mild summer's day. And this is not an overdrawn picture or the worst that might be given; for rain and snow combined often coat the roofs of cars so completely and solidly that they are worse than the smoothest skating-pond, and moving upon them is attended with danger at every step. Jumping—it cannot be called walking—from one car to another is in such cases positively reckless. The brake-apparatus will in a snow-storm be coated with ice so rapidly that vigorous action is required to keep it in working condition. Even a wind alone, in dry weather, sometimes compels the men to crawl from one car to another, grasping such projections as they may. The brakeman who forgets to take his rubber coat and overalls sometimes suffers severely from sudden changes of temperature. In spring or fall a lively shower will be encountered in a sheltered valley, and the clothing be completely drenched, and then within perhaps half an hour the ascent of a few hundred feet brings the train into an atmosphere a few degrees below the freezing point, so that with the aid of the wind, fanned by the speed of the train, the clothes are very soon frozen stiff.
Flagging in Winter.