Poling Railroad Cars

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(Update: it is called "propping" in the UK)

One of the items the docent talks about during his tour of the Central Florida Railroad Museum is a "pushpole" used to shove cars. In the photo, it is the tapered pole that is hanging above the door. I include a closeup so that you can see the ends had a metal cap.

This is a topic where a video is worth a lot of words. Note the brakeman riding the caboose turns to  apply the handbrake near the end of the video. I watched again to confirm he was already on the caboose while another brakeman was holding the pole. I'm reminded that trains had 5 crew members back then --- engineer, fireman, front and rear brakemen, and a conductor. Steam engines would carry a pole on the side of the tender and early diesels would attach the brackets to the walkway. A lot of cabooses assigned to local freight service also had a pole hanging outside. (cs.trains.com) I would like to have seen the pole in the museum hung lower so that one could try to lift it. That looks like a pretty big piece of wood, and wood can get rather heavy. I'm glad I don't have to carry that thing along the side of a track were ties and sloping ballast can make your footing a little tricky.

Robert Wanner shared his post of two photos and the comment: "Poling method of shifting freight cars with locomotive on one track and car on another. The heavy wooden length of pole was placed in sockets on both the tender of the locomotive and the steel end of the outside brace wooden box car to complete this maneuver. Shove slowly, pole will fall to the ground when boxcar is on its way. Unknown location and date, but this procedure was eventually outlawed. Photos either by or collection of Forest W. Trittenbach."

[There a quite a few interesting comments, some of which offer videos. Others mention that they know someone who got killed while poling.]

Ken Graczyk: Definition of flying switch: a maneuver in which one or more railroad cars are disconnected from a locomotive while moving and as the locomotive pulls away are switched to another track to roll to a desired position under their own momentum. [Another dangerous maneuver that has been outlawed for safety reasons. Of course, Class I railroads do a lot less industrial switching now than they did before the Interstates were built.]

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Using a wooden pole to shift a boxcar on adjacent track, socket to socket.

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Car is rolling after being shoved by use of wooden pole with locomotive on adjacent track.

Larry Fink commented on Robert's share
Some railroads sought to lessen the danger and built specialized cars with poles attached to either side.
This is a Reading poling car at Frackville, 1917.

 

Robert Wanner posted
Reading Company Poling Car from 1927. A car with a purpose, but finally outlawed. Reading Company photo.
George Robinson: Never seen one what was its purpose
Scott Pitzer: A way for a loco to push a car which is on the next parallel track
Robert Wanner: George Robinson Saves time, less back up and move forward.

 

Ellis F. Friedman commented on Robert's post

I found this online in Trains Magazine.

Bob Chaparro: 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.

Locomotives and freight cars would have four "poling pockets," one on each side of the front and rear sills.


IRM's 1948 Baldwin DT-6-6-2000 has rather deep pockets on an angle mounted away from the corners.

More typically, the pockets are near the corners. A couple of different views of IRM's 1944 FM H10-44 show the pockets. They are more shallow, but still on an angle.

At first I did not see the pockets in the 1956 FM H-12-044TS. But then I noticed the round indentations in the frame just above the steps.

I found a reference to a 1908 boxcar picture on a site that allows non-commercial copying.

Shorpy

A closeup of the 1908 boxcar to the right

The 2nd boxcar

This issue of polling pockets gives me an excuse to make more trips to IRM to take pictures of freight cars as well as engines.

To understand the utility of poling, we have to remember that during the early decades of railroading, there were no trucks, just horses. So most companies got their supplies and shipped their products using the railroad. These companies were served with many industrial spurs. Thus a local train spotting cars on various side tracks was common practice. Since a lot of switching maneuvers would be done to spot the many cars in a local, the opportunity to pole a car would occur much more frequently during the first part of the 20th century. When I moved to Downers Grove in the 1970s, there were just two industrial spurs still being served --- Pepperidge Farm and a lumber company. The lumber company is now a landscape company. A lead still heads into the yard, but I don't think it is used. As the opportunities to serve industries with freight cars disappeared, the need to pole cars disappeared. One person commented on a discussion board that the last time he polled a car was in 1940s. And rrboomer commented in cs.trains.com: "From actual observation, the last time I saw a crew pole a car was about 1958.  By around 1964 the pole had pretty well vanished  from the railroad scene." In practice, it was dangerous. You were lucky if a pole just broke because sometimes it shattered into a bunch of flying splinters. Also note that the weight of the car being pushed increased from about 100k pounds in 1900 to 260k pounds in 1960, making it more likely that a pushpole would break. [cs.trains.com] The docent in the museum mentioned in which year polling was outlawed. I have learned that I should not wait almost a year before I write about a visit because now I can't remember the year. But I do remember it was the early 1970s. He also mentioned that you can tell the quality of a model railroad manufacture by whether or not they include polling pockets (dimples) in models of pre-1970 equipment.

cs.trains.com

Some railroads even built polling cars. Note the pushpole mounted at the center of the sill.

Update: closeup of a poling pocket on a Whitcomb locomotive where the edge of the pocket has been "torn."

A closeup of a poling pocket on a hopper car. That car riveted the pocket to the frame. This is the first time I have seen it cast into the frame of a freight car.

Harold J. Krewer posted the following two 1986 photos of La Salle and Bureau County #8 with the comment:

Note in the shots of No. 8's pilot that the poling pockets are close in by the drawbar...this is because No. 8 had a cast frame, the end portion of which is clearly visible in the photos. LS&BC 8, bought new in 1950, was the only S8 built with a cast frame. Harold Krewer photos.

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Edward Wayne Bridges posted
NICKEL PLATE POLING A CAR INTO THE GM&O YARD TRACK IN BLOOMINGTON ILL. 1954
Michael Matalis Wow, a 44 tonner and they're poling, I don't know which is a more amazing catch!
Joe M McMillan They are doing it wrong.
Edward Peters They should be use the polling pocket on the car. Unless when they started they couldn't get to the pocket due to the angle.
David Plotts Did that a couple of times when I first started. However the Co. didn't want us to do it. The little ALCO"s (200 series) were equipped with a pole and re-railing frog in the late fifties and early sixties.
Randy Garlock Nowa days everybody would be fired.

LG Gibson posted three photos with the comment:

Poling a car is a long outlawed practice in railroading due to dangers and injury. Practice allowed to move a car on an adjacent track. Poling pockets were once a fixture on locos and rolling stock. Today for historical accuracy Pere Marquette 1225 carries the pole.

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A better copy of the first photo posted by LG Gibson.

Greg Johnston commented on a post
Photo by Gordon B. Mott, Louis A. Marre collection

Wayne Koch posted
The art of poling - at Ludlow Mill.

Wayne commented on his posting

(new window)  The opening sequence of the guy running to try to get on demonstrates why there are now rules that say no more than 4mph or stopped (depending on the railroad).

(6:20 new window) (Mike Harlan shared; Ernie Grose shared)

It describes the Huletts at Whiskey Island and the shut locomotives that poled the hoppers.

(Facebooked)

Samuel Finley: That’s why they the push poles were outlawed!