N&W Locomotive Displaying Red Flags / No Caboose

[rjemery]

Reference the Fall 2009 issue of Classic Trains, page 82, "Beyond the Training Program" by Robert Siik.  In his excellent article, Siik writes of his early railroading experience on the N&W in the Summer of 1978 during a clerical strike.  The lead sentence in the third paragraph is:

One week [of the strike] slipped into two, and then three.  The occasional train passing through Richlands on the Clinch Valley District was capped by a red flag instead of a caboose ...

While every road had its own designations for colored classification flags, my understanding is that red flags typically meant "last section."  Thus, I don't understand the author's reference.  In this context, how is a red flag and no caboose related?  If it was an only train, why even display red flags?

[rjemery]

Disregard the previous post.  I have come to realize the red flag was on the last car of the train in question, not on the front of the locomotive as I had surmised.

[wjstix]

The sentence as written is a little misleading by using "capped"...a cap is usually something on the head (like a cap you wear) or the top of a bottle etc. so I wouldn't immediately think of it coming at the end rather than the front or head end of the train.

[rjemery]

 Thanks.  I'm glad to learn I wasn't the only one led astray by the wording.

[ValleyX]

During the clerical strike in 1978, when railroad supervision sort of ran the trains (sorry for the editorial comment), they didn't use cabooses and did use two and, I believe, maybe even a few one man crews to run the trains.  Since they had no end-of-train devices, they used flags.  The only end-of-train devices that I would know for sure existed then would have been owned by the Florida East Coast and I don't know how sophisticated they were then.

[bajadog]

"An engine or engines coupled, with or without cars, displaying a marker to the rear."

Consolidated Code definitikon of a "train."  The red flag was the 'marker.'