skate man

[train18393]

Was reading my fathers old logs from the Walbridge Ohio C&O hump yard, which include engine numbers and his crew position. Many times he was the "skate man". Just what does the skate man do on the hump?

Paul

Dayton and Mad River (model)Railroad

[Norm48327]

Check this out.

http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/169642.aspx

Link does not want to activate this morning. Sunday; the software is sleeping in.

[BigJim]

train18393

Just what does the skate man do on the hump?

He actually works at the far end of the hump bowl placing these on the rails to catch the cars and prevent them from rolling out.

[BaltACD]

BigJim

train18393

Just what does the skate man do on the hump?

He actually works at the far end of the hump bowl placing these on the rails to catch the cars and prevent them from rolling out.

Skates have been replaced by various kinds of 'retarders' that are either permanetly applied by spring pressure, or activated by the hump operator with hydrulic pressure.  In all cases their use is to prevent cars that have rolled over the hump from running out of the bowl tracks.

In the days before skates (and retarders for that matter), hump riders (brakeman) rode the cars over the hump and applied hand brakes to control the speed of cars as well as secure the cars at the 'far' end of the bowl track in the clear of other tracks.

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Skate men were necessary on rider humps when the riders caught a car without functioning hand brakes.  He would call for a skate man, who would then run out and place one or two skates on the yard track in front of the runaway car.

[BaltACD]

CSSHEGEWISCH

Skate men were necessary on rider humps when the riders caught a car without functioning hand brakes.  He would call for a skate man, who would then run out and place one or two skates on the yard track in front of the runaway car.

Normal rules of Hump Yard operations required skates to be placed on a clear track before switching any car into the track, no matter what the brake situation was on any individual car.

[train18393]

Thank you all for your input. The paticular time he bid on that job was in the 50s and later, and by that time the Walbridge hump had retarders. I distinctly remember many times going to work with him, but by that time he was a Conductor on the Hump. I have been up in the tower where the retarder operator sat. I also remember checking the cars off the hump list as they crested the hump, of course with my dads and the rest of the crews close supervison as I was only in my early teens at that time. I never went with him when he was the skate man. What are the chanches of that happening on todays take your kid to work day!!! Thanks again.

Paul

[CShaveRR]

I might be able to shed a different light on this, since I'm probably the only person on the Forum who actually worked as a skate man.

There were no inert retarders at the pulldown end of Proviso for most of the time I worked there, frm 1971 to 2010.  Three months after hiring out, it was mandatory for all yard employees to attend "skate school", taught by a very old head, who was tiny and wiry, and funny, and born without fear.  We already knew the safety rules, but Herbie (no, not that Herby!) had us breaking a bunch of them...showing us how to get on moving tank cars (no!), tying staff brakes (no!), uncoupling cars from the hind end of a moving cut.  

The object was to cut off cars as a "post", avoiding whenever possible the need to deal with a clear track.  If the track was clear, two skates were placed on the south rail (the second one in case the first one got knocked off), at a specified distance away from the end of the track.  Proviso had three skatemen per shift to patrol the 69-track classification yard.  These guys, when I hired out and went through the school, had to have an ear attuned to the speaker system to know when a clear track was about to get some business, and acknowledge that they would be there.
Later there were telephones installed in the skate shanties, still later the skatemen were given radio handsets, and finally the skate jobs were abolished, with the pulldown crews cutting off the "post" cars.

My one on-the-job injury in my career with the railroad occurred on a skate job.  My own fault, of course.  I didn't believe I'd tied enough strong handbrakes to hold the track in, so I grabbed a couple more cars and started applying the hand brakes.  They hit the cars I'd already tied down--and stopped very abruptly.  My feet were knocked off the high brake platform.  I grabbed the roof grabiron hard, and did not fall, but the brake platform tore open one thigh.  Never saw so much blood in my life, and it was mine--all mine!  Trainmaster took me to the hospital, where I was cleaned out, shot up, and sentenced to three days' physical therapy.

When they abolished the skate jobs, there may have been comments about how thigs would slow down, how this wouldn't work, and so on...but nobody bemoaned the loss of those jobs.