Very interesting article - but could someone explain to me what some of those technical terms mean? What did “dynamiting” the engine do? What’s a Johnson Bar? I’m sure that the paragraph describing his fatal crash means he did something unusual and heroic, but I don’t really understand quite what it was.
Check out the Indianapolis street car strike of 1913. Crowds were singing “Casey Jones, scabbing on the job.”
First of all, that was an excellent report.
I’d like to clear up/nit pick one thing though. The Grateful Dead didn’t write that song. They, for the most part, didn’t write the lyrics to any songs. Like many of their classic songs, the lyrics to Casey Jones was written by Robert Hunter.
Debunked? Please. Hunter certainly didn’t think that Casey Jones really took cocaine and you’d be hard pressed to find any dead heads who think that the song is meant to be taken literally. (I’ve been to over a hundred shows and have seen that song performed live a number of times.) Hunter’s songs are about imagery and word play. He probably just liked the rhyme.
In an interview with Alan Jackson, Hunter kind of cryptically talked about that. He was annoyed that some people thought that the song glorified cocaine when really he was intending to do the opposite. It’s really an anti-cocaine song using elements of the real life Casey Jones story as an allegory.
I’m not an expert on railroad lore by any means, but as I understand it, “dynamiting” the engine meant trying to stop the locomotive as quickly as possible. The Johnson-bar was the equivalent of a gearshift, named after its inventor, I believe. Casey was trying, with not nearly enough time, to minimize the severity of the crash he could see was unavoidably about to happen.
Lyrics by Joe Hill here. Even more fictional than the Dead’s song. Hill deserved to be sung about by Joan Baez at her shriekiest for that one.
Casey Jones was a member of both the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, if the Wikipedia article about him is to be believed; he certainly supported the idea of labor unions. Jones and Sim Webb were working a double shift the night of the accident, but it was because the regular driver scheduled to take the southbound train (the New Orleans Special) was ill, not because of labor unrest. Jones agreed to take the job but insisted on having Webb with him, because the two knew each others’ habits so well and worked together as a strong team.
IIRC, there was a bawdy Casey Jones cadence in An Officer And A Gentlemen.
Indeed there was. It went thus (spoiler box used to protect delicate sensitivities):
Casey Jones was a son of a bitch
Drove his train through a 30 foot ditch
Came on out with his dick in his hand
Said “Listen ladies, I’m a hell of a man!”
Went into town and lined up a hundred
Swore up and down he’d fuck every one
Fucked 98 'til his balls turned blue
Then he backed off, jacked off, and fucked the other two!
Just for the record, that’s not historically accurate either. 
That was one opf the songs that got my mouth washed out with soap. And mom should have believed me when I told her that I learned it from Grandpa.
“Dynamiting” means simply applying the brakes in emergency. What he probably did – or at least attempted – was:[ul]
[li]Close the throttle[/li][li]Put brakes on emergency to stop the wheels from turning[/li][li]Move the Johnson bar from forward to reverse[/li][li]Release the brakes[/li][li]Open the throttle[/li][li]Open the sander valve to maximize traction[/li][/ul]This would make the drivers go backwards, against the train’s momentum.
In the movie The Train, when Burt Lancaster was running a locomotive light that was attacked by a hostile aircraft, he opened the throttle wide to run for a handy tunnel ahead, then used the above technique to (barely) keep from popping out the other end. The French equivalent of the Johnson bar is the wheel with handle on it you see him and the other engineers twirling with a distinctive squeaky sound thoughout the movie.
All of it? Or just parts?
Uh… parts. He did drive a train, and we know he had sex at least a few times 'cause he had kids. Aaaaaaaand that’s it.
And I can’t blame Mr. Jones for doing it, but that’s actually counterproductive. Once your wheels start skidding, you lose traction, and spinning backwards full-speed will have the same effect as stopping the wheels entirely. Your best bet is to put on just enough brakes that you’re just shy of skidding (which admittedly takes a bit of skill).
That technique I described has been mentioned enough – especially in the lurid literature of the time – that it would seem SOP. I have no idea whether this was determined after experimentation or not. The problem is, if you overshoot and start skidding, you can’t just ease up a bit. You would have to completely release the brakes, then reapply for another try.
Also, back in Casey’s day, the brakes were not self-lapping. Unlike your car brake, the second try would not be a matter of pushing the brake handle over a bit less but rather, moving it to service or quick service not quite so long before moving the handle back to lap. You could put the brakes in service then back to lap, then back to service and again back to lap, gaining a bit more braking power with each cycle. That’s a bit fussy to do when the markers ahead are looming ever closer and you’re quivering from all the adrenaline just dumped into your bloodstream.
Even with the self-lapping brakes of today where the brake handle’s position does determine the ultimate braking power, a full release and reapply would be needed if you start skidding.
Could you clarify this a little…
The brakes in my car are self-lapping. What would my experience be like if I were trying to stop without skidding on a closed course with wet pavement and a scantily clad model in the passenger seat? (Let’s ignore ABS.)
I’m assuming that I’m not trying to pump the brakes, but if I start to skid I let off the brake and reapply.
Would it be at all like this:
I start at Braking Power 0. I pressed the brake full one time. I’m now at BP 1 and not braking much.
I let off the brake completely and then reapply full. I’m now at BP2 and braking well without skidding.
I let off the brake completely and then reapply full. I’m now at BP 3 and I start to skid.
I now release the brake and go back to BP 0 and start over.
Kinda like that, yeah. The big differences are that you don’t get any physical feedback from a train’s brake handle (although you have pressure gauges) and it takes seconds instead of fractions of seconds for things to react.
When I was writing the post I was looking around the web for a site that had a clear, simple explanation on how train brakes work and couldn’t find any. HowStuffWorks has an article but it concentrates on trucks. Trains, too, have triple valves and reservoirs, but controlling them is what’s different.
Straight air brakes
George Westinghouse’s first attempt at air brakes is pretty much what you or I would come up with. On the locomotive is an air compressor (called an air pump in steam days) that feeds a reservoir. There is a control valve for the the reservoir (the brake valve) and a pipe that leads to the brake cylinders on the locomotive plus through flexible couplings to the brake cylinders on each car in the train. There are hand valves at each end of each car, and the valve on the tail end of the last car is closed so the air won’t escape. You have two gauges (or one gauge with two needles) that shows the reservoir pressure and the pipe pressure.
You’re chugging along with the reservoir at full pressure (90 pounds for a freight train) and the pipe pressure at zero. Whoops, curve ahead so you decide to slow down. From release you move the brake handle two notches to service for a few seconds. This lets air from the reservoir into the pipe where it pushes the brake cylinders on each car which move and causes the brake shoes to press against the wheels. You watch the pipe pressure gauge climb to say 15 pounds, decide that’s enough braking power, and move the handle back a notch to lap. That closes the connection between the reservoir and the pipe so the braking system has 15 PSI trapped in it and you continue to slow down. When you’ve slowed enough, you pull back another notch to release which opens the pipe to the atmosphere. The pipe pressure drops to zero releasing the brakes. Needless to say, when you’re putting air into the pipe the pressure in the reservoir is dropping, so the air pump will kick in as needed to get it back to 90 pounds. Besides service, the brake handle has quick service that lets air into the pipe faster, and emergency for the fastest application possible.
While a big improvement over manual braking up until then, straight air brakes had some undesirable features. Train length was limited to about a dozen cars. You can imagine how putting air into the train pipe of a mile long train will exhaust the reservoir long before there’s much braking force. Worse, even with a short train, it there’s a derailment or something and the train pipe parts, you’ve no braking at all when you need it most. So, ol’ George invented the . . .
Automatic air brake
You still have a reservoir, control valve, and train pipe running the length of the train, but the train pipe does not connect directly to the brake cylinders. Instead, on each car, it goes to a triple valve which connects to an auxiliary reservoir and the brake cylinder. You have four gauges in front of you now, main reservoir, auxiliary reservoir, brake cylinder (all on the locomotive) and train pipe. all the ones I’ve seen are two, two-needle gauges. Before moving a train, you need to charge up the auxiliary reservoirs in each car, a process that can take some time. You move the handle to release. This connects the train pipe to the reservoir so you see the pipe pressure rise. On each car the triple valve has higher pressure in the pipe than the auxiliary reservoir so it moves to connect the pipe to the reservoir. Back in the cab you see the main reservoir drop a lot because you’re pushing a big quantity of air down that pipe. The pump faithfully kicks in, and you watch all three gauges climb back up to 90 pounds. When they do you can release what amounts to your parking brake and start moving.
You come on that same curve you did before and want to slow down. As before, you put the handle at service, but this time, it opens the pipe to atmosphere. You watch the pipe pressure drop from 90 to 75 pounds, decide that’s good enough, and move back a notch to lap. The pipe pressure drops and the triple valve in each car senses that the pipe pressure is now lower than the auxiliary reservoir pressure, so it moves to connect the reservoir to the brake cylinder. When the auxiliary reservoir has dropped to 75 pounds, the same as the pipe, the triple valve moves to close off the reservoir and the brake cylinder. Now you’ve got the brake cylinder at 15 pounds, the pipe and auxiliary reservoir both at 75 pounds, and the main reservoir still at 90 because it hasn’t been connected to. By releasing a small amount of air from the train pipe, you’ve put a much larger quantity of stored air to work slowing down the train. And even in service, if you just leave it there long enough, full braking power will be applied with zero pounds in the pipe and both the auxiliary reservoir and brake cylinders at the same – lower than 90 I’m sure – pressure, but easily enough to keep the wheels from turning
When the speed low enough, you move the handle back to release. As before, this connects the main reservoir to the pipe which rises to 90 pounds, the triple valve senses the pipe pressure is higher than the auxiliary reservoir pressure, connects the two together, and opens the brake cylinder to atmosphere so its pressure drops to zero and braking action stops. Piece o’ cake.
The braking action is not instantaneous, but takes effect about a dozen car lengths a second, much faster than with straight air. Also, as you can imagine, injudicious use of the brake on a long downgrade can exhaust the auxiliary reservoirs without giving them much of a chance to recharge. Truckers have the same problem, which is why you see those runaway truck ramps just before a sharp turn. Still, one main feature is that if the pipe parts the air runs out, and the brakes go on . . . (wait for it) . . . automatically. There have been improvements over the decades, one of which was adding a self-lapping feature. Instead of service. lap, release like you did back in Casey’s day, you can simply move the handle until the brake cylinder reads 15 pounds and leave it there. Unlike car brakes, though, moving it back a fraction doe not ease the braking force; you still have to go all the way to release for that.
And now you know more about train brakes than you ever wanted to.
Or at least the difference in pressure between my ignorance and my understanding is reduced say 15 pounds.
That would help explain why putting the brakes on emergency would be called “dynamiting”. Rapid valve opening and dumping lots of air would make a large noise akin to an explosion.