A brakeman's cabin (also brakeman's cab) or brakeman's caboose (US) (German: Bremserhaus) was a small one-man compartment at one end of a railway wagon to provide shelter for the brakeman from the weather and in which equipment for manually operating the wagon brake was located. They were built in the days before continuous braking was available and the locomotive brake needed to be augmented by brakemen applying the wagon brakes individually.[ citation needed ]
In the early years of the railway, brakemen just had an open seat. The first cabs appeared around 1880. The number of brakeman's cabs occupied in a given train depended on the conditions of the route and the speed of the train; on some trains all the cabs might be occupied. Communication between engine driver and brakemen was by train whistle signals which required the design of the brakeman's cab to be partially open to the elements.[ citation needed ]
Working in brakeman's cabins was dangerous, especially in winter because the cabins were unheated and draughty and there was little room to move around and keep warm. As a result brakemen frequently froze, sometimes even to death, placing the entire train at risk due to lack of braking power.[ citation needed ]
Brakeman's cabins became superfluous with the widespread introduction of compressed air brakes. In Germany, such brakes first appeared on D-Zug (express) trains at the end of the 19th century. The building of brakeman's cabins stopped on German passenger trains in the early 1900s and on goods trains around 1925. [1] Goods wagons with a brakeman's cab were still regularly seen in Germany up to the mid-1970s, especially on Italian goods wagons. With some railway companies, such as the Italian FS and the Swiss SBB, they even lasted until the 1990s.
A conductor or guard is a train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train/locomotive. The conductor title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. In Commonwealth English, a conductor is also known as guard or train manager.
A railroad car, railcar, railway wagon, railway carriage, railway truck, railwagon, railcarriage or railtruck, also called a train car, train wagon, train carriage or train truck, is a vehicle used for the carrying of cargo or passengers on a rail transport network. Such cars, when coupled together and hauled by one or more locomotives, form a train. Alternatively, some passenger cars are self-propelled in which case they may be either single railcars or make up multiple units.
A caboose is a crewed North American railroad car coupled at the end of a freight train. Cabooses provide shelter for crew at the end of a train, who were formerly required in switching and shunting; as well as in keeping a lookout for load shifting, damage to equipment and cargo, and overheating axles.
Brake van and guard's van are terms used mainly in the UK, Ireland, Australia and India for a railway vehicle equipped with a hand brake which can be applied by the guard. The equivalent North American term is caboose, but a British brake van and a caboose are very different in appearance, because the former usually has only four wheels, while the latter usually has bogies. German railways employed brakeman's cabins combined into other cars.
The end of train device (ETD), sometimes referred to as an EOT, flashing rear-end device (FRED) or sense and braking unit (SBU) is an electronic device mounted on the end of freight trains in replacement of a caboose. They are divided into three categories: "dumb" units, which only provide a visible indication of the rear of the train with a flashing red taillight; "average intelligence" units with a brake pipe pressure gauge; and "smart" units, which send back data to the crew in the locomotive via radio-based telemetry. They originated in North America, and are also used elsewhere in the world, where they may include complete End of Train Air System (ETAS) or Sense and Brake Unit (SBU) devices.
A railway brake is a type of brake used on the cars of railway trains to enable deceleration, control acceleration (downhill) or to keep them immobile when parked. While the basic principle is similar to that on road vehicle usage, operational features are more complex because of the need to control multiple linked carriages and to be effective on vehicles left without a prime mover. Clasp brakes are one type of brakes historically used on trains.
A brakeman is a rail transport worker whose original job was to assist the braking of a train by applying brakes on individual wagons. The advent of through brakes, brakes on every wagon which could be controlled by the driver, made this role redundant, although the name lives on, for example, in the United States where brakemen carry out a variety of functions both on the track and within trains.
The Gotthard railway, named after the Saint-Gotthard Massif which it crosses, is the Swiss trans-alpine railway line from northern Switzerland to the canton of Ticino. The line forms a major part of an important international railway link between northern and southern Europe, especially on the Rotterdam-Basel-Genoa corridor. The Gotthard Railway Company was the former private railway company that financed the construction of and originally operated that line.
Indian Railways coaching stock consists of various travel class passenger coaches, freight wagons apart from specialized and dedicated coaching stock for other uses. Indian Railways operates India's railway system and comes under the purview of the Ministry of Railways of Government of India. As of 2022, it operates over 8000 trains daily with a inventory of 318,196 freight wagons and 84,863 passenger coaches. The rolling stock is manufactured by five units owned by Indian Railways, four public sector units and one private company.
A running board or footboard is a narrow step fitted under the side doors of a tram, car, or truck. It aids entry, especially into high vehicles, and is typical of vintage trams and cars, which had much higher ground clearances than today's vehicles. It is also used as a fashion statement on vehicles that would not otherwise require it. The origin of the name running board is obscure; the first running boards predate automobiles and were installed on carriages as early as the 17th century.
The German term Verbandsbauart describes both a type of goods wagon as well as a type of tram.
Goods wagons or freight wagons, also known as goods carriages, goods trucks, freight carriages or freight trucks, are unpowered railway vehicles that are used for the transportation of cargo. A variety of wagon types are in use to handle different types of goods, but all goods wagons in a regional network typically have standardized couplers and other fittings, such as hoses for air brakes, allowing different wagon types to be assembled into trains. For tracking and identification purposes, goods wagons are generally assigned a unique identifier, typically a UIC wagon number, or in North America, a company reporting mark plus a company specific serial number.
The so-called Austauschbauart wagons were German railway vehicles produced from the late 1920s onwards which had common components built to agreed standards.
This article lists some of the terminology used at present and in the past by Australian railway employees, contractors, railway historians and railway enthusiasts. Many of the terms appear from time to time in specialist, rail-related publications.
A compartment coach is a railway passenger coach divided into separate areas or compartments, with no means of moving between compartments.
The GWR Toad is a class of railway brake van, designed by and built for the Great Western Railway. Used by the GWR from 1894, and post-1947 by the Western Region of British Railways, its role was a safety brake on goods trains in the West of England, the Midlands and Wales.
The Bürgenstock Funicular is a funicular railway in the canton of Nidwalden, Switzerland. The line links the landing stage at Kehrsiten-Bürgenstock, served by the regular passenger boats of the Schifffahrtsgesellschaft des Vierwaldstättersees, with the Bürgenstock resort and its famous hotels.
A cattle wagon or a livestock wagon is a type of railway vehicle designed to carry livestock. Within the classification system of the International Union of Railways they fall under Class H - special covered wagons - which, in turn are part of the group of covered goods wagons, although cattle have historically also been transported in open goods wagons. The American equivalent is called a stock car.
British Railways inherited a variety of brake vans from each of the Big Four: GWR, LNER, Southern Railway and LMS due to the nationalisation of the railways in 1948.
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