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 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 r ...

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.

History

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 A train driver is a person who operates a train, railcar, or other rail transport vehicle. The driver is in charge of and is responsible for the mechanical operation of the train, train speed, and all of the train handling (also known as bra ...

and brakemen was by train whistle signals which required the design of the brakeman's cab to be partially open to the elements.

Risk

Working in brakeman's cabins was dangerous, especially in

winter Winter is the coldest and darkest season of the year in temperate and polar climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring. The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons; winter occurs when a hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun. Dif ...

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.

Decline

Germany

Brakeman's cabins became superfluous with the widespread introduction of compressed air brakes. In Germany, such brakes first appeared on ''

D-Zug A ''Schnellzug'' is an express train in German-speaking countries. The term is used both generically and also as a specific Train categories in Europe, train type. In Germany and Austria it is also referred to colloquially as a ''D-Zug'', a short ...

'' (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. 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.

Gallery

File:Preuss Abteilwagen C3 P9030010.JPG, Prussian

compartment coach A compartment coach is a railway passenger coach (US: passenger car (rail), passenger car) divided into separate areas or compartments, with no means of moving between compartments. The compartment coach should not be confused with the corrido ...

with brakeman's cabin File:Auschwitz II-Birkenau - Death Camp - Railway Carriage on Siding - Oswiecim - Poland.jpg,

Cattle wagon 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 ...

with brakeman's cabin on

Siding Siding may refer to: * Siding (construction), the outer covering or cladding of a house * Siding (rail) In rail terminology, a siding is a low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line, branch lin ...

inside the

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) d ...

Oświęcim Oświęcim (; ; ; ) is a town in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland, situated southeast of Katowice, near the confluence of the Vistula (''Wisła'') and Soła rivers. Oświęcim dates back to the 12th century, when it was an im ...

- Poland.

References

External links

* {{commonscat-inline, Brakeman's cab
Entry for "Bremsersitze" in ''Rölls Enzyklopädie des Eisenbahnwesens'' (1912)
Rolling stock Cabooses