Brakeman (railway)
Brakemen are railway workers who are responsible for braking railway trains. This profession has been superseded in Europe and on most railways outside of Europe with the introduction of automatic braking systems.
commitment
If railway trains do not have continuous brake cables or lines , the vehicles must be braked by hand. In Europe, the brakemen usually sat on brake seats or in the brakeman's cab on appropriately equipped railway wagons . They locked the brake with a hand crank and released it again. The brakes had to work as synchronously as possible in order to bring the trains to a standstill without jerking. The order for this was given by whistling signals from the locomotive . Another form of communication between train drivers and brakemen was not yet possible.
Long service hours and tired brakemen were a problem. For example, on freight and military trains of the Prussian Railways, the brakemen were supposed to make themselves known to the dispatcher or supervisory officer of a train station, give military greetings during the day, and swing a white lantern up and down at night. This was to check whether all brakes were still ready for use. The job of the brakeman was very tough, especially in winter, as they were exposed to the cold in the narrow brakeman's cabins on the wagons without being able to move or warm up.
The brakeman needed a brake seat, a hand crank and a white lantern to communicate with the driver .
Since the widespread introduction of continuous air brakes in the Deutsche Reichsbahn on freight trains in the mid-1920s, this profession has ceased to exist in Germany .
Brakemen are still in use today
- at the San Francisco Cable Cars ,
- on forest railways in south-east Europe, where forest workers also act as brakes because the timber transports usually did not have automatic brakes,
- on the Massaua – Asmata railway line , Eritrea , with an altitude difference of more than 2,300 meters.
Trivia
Especially on steep railway lines with heavy goods traffic , there were real colonies in which the brakemen lived with their families, since all the cars on the trains had to be manned with brakes. Examples are the railway villages of Neuenmarkt , Heigenbrücken and Pressig-Rothenkirchen .
The only still in Germany by hand crank braked railway vehicles are of a Tender and the three cars of the replica of the Adler - train . The replica of the steam locomotive itself (like the original) is unbraked.
The term “auxiliary brakes” originally meant an assistant riding in the brakeman's house, but since the 1930s it has also been used to jokingly refer to people who performed other simple auxiliary activities, such as vicarious chaplains or student assistants . The term is rarely used today.
The signals Zp 2 (apply hand brakes moderately), Zp 3 (apply hand brakes strongly) and Zp 4 (release hand brakes) were given by the driver to request the brakes to brake or release the brakes. Although these signals are obsolete today, as there are no longer any brakes, they can still be found (as of January 2020) in the DB's signal book .
literature
- Victor von Röll : Encyclopedia of the Railway System . 2nd Edition. Vienna 1912ff.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Röll, Vol. 3, pp. 16–52.
- ↑ Eisenbahndirektion Mainz (ed.): Official Journal of the Royal Prussian and Grand Ducal Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz of February 3, 1906, No. 6. Announcement No. 52, p. 35.
- ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Forgotten Professions: These jobs no longer exist. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Duden.de
- ↑ Ril 301 - Signal book - DB Netz AG. Deutsche Bahn AG, accessed on January 19, 2020 .