Speaking of three man crews. How about 4 man crews as in "full crew law
states". On the Rock Island it was Arkansas.
A train crew consisted of engineer, fireman, three brakemen and a conductor.
It was like Keystone Kops to see this kind of a crew switching on the lead.
Normally on two were working and two were "sitting in the shade". Trains
that ran interstate with one of the states being Arkansas the "extra"
brakeman got off at the nearest station to the state line.
If memory serves me correctly Arkansas got rid of this law in the late 60's
or early 70's. A massive lobbying campaign was carried on by all the
Arkansas railroads and finally common sense prevailed.
Just as an aside,if memory serves, when the multi unit diesel consists came
into being in the late 30's early 40's the organizations wanted an engineer
and fireman on each unit. The compromise was that the fireman stayed long
after he had anything like something necessary to do. The exception was
passenger trains with steam generator units. These took up a great deal of
the fireman's time as it seems they malfunctioned for often than they worked
correctly. They were far from automatic.
Among other things I have been wrong about was my thinking that the fireman
and the hotbox would be with us forever.
Pete Hedgpeth
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