Re: [CBQ] poling

["Bob Chaparro via groups.io" <chiefbobbb=verizon.net@groups.io>]

Some background and factoids.

All new ATSF cars built after 1944 didn't have poling pockets. Although individual railroads began to order cars without them, other railroads continued to buy cars with poling pockets.

Poling with a pole commonly would be done to spot a car on a siding with a facing-point turnout. This maneuver often would be tried in addition to such other risky stunts as flying switches, and of course when the car would hang up, poling would have to be used to clear the turnout.

19th Century yards were usually built as "pole yards". A track was built adjacent and parallel to the yard lead and ladder. When a train arrived, or a cut of cars was to be switched, it was spotted on the lead and the locomotive cut off. The switch engine on the poling track placed a pole between its pilot and the trailing corner of the first car to be shoved into a body track, the pin pulled between that car and the second car, and the engine shoved ahead to push the car into the body track. The engine stopped and the pole dropped out, the car continued into the body track under its own momentum, and the engine and pole were brought back to the next car in line on the lead.

Push Poles came in a variety of configurations, between 8- and 12-feet in length. This push pole is on display at the Saskatchewan Railroad Museum. The hardwood pole is approximately 12 feet long, 5 inches in diameter, and, upon close inspection, has two grab irons for holding the pole in place between the locomotive and the target car. About an inch or two from the end, a metal band prevents splitting with another band located about a foot in from the ends.

It was important that the grain of the wood be straight and tight for the length of the pole, without knots, for maximum compression strength. Several detailed photographs of a hardwood push pole are located at "Railfan.net Erie Lackawanna."

By the poling or "staking" method the train is usually run out of the receiving tracks and left standing on a track which joins with the ladder of the distribution tracks. The switch engine working on an adjoining parallel track, pushes, by means of a pole, the cars from the head end of the train, one at a time, or as many at a time as are found together belonging to the same destination or lot, commonly called a "cut."

A knowledgeable person commented, "Individual railroads would have forbidden the practice without regard to what other railroads were or were not doing. From my reading of various first-person accounts of railroading it appears that the practice of poling continued on a few roads even after it was forbidden by management. Of course, the same could be said for any number of other railroader habits or practices".

The TRAINS March 1993 article also quotes an ICC official who states, "If the push pole was officially outlawed, I have no record of that fact…"

Generally speaking, freight cars were still being manufactured with poling pockets well into at least the 1950s and locomotives into the early 1960s. GP-30 locomotives can be seen with poling pockets. In the case of the switchers one can speculate that it was not as easy to redo the pilot area castings to omit the poling pocket.

Again, individual railroads may have banned poling and perhaps certain states. But I have never seen documented proof that the Federal Government did so as some have claimed.

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA

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