Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
thing approaching modern safety standards took a terrible toll.
Brakemen worked on top of moving railcars in all types of weather.
Bad track, usually because it was laid in haste, often caused derail-
ments. Locomotive boiler explosions were not uncommon and
always fatal to the head-end crew. It's estimated that in the 30
years leading up to World War I, railroad workers were killed on
the job at the rate of some 2,500 a year, an average of 7 deaths
every single day. Many thousands more were injured. Even every-
day working conditions were often appalling. Temperatures in the
locomotive cab could reach -30 degrees in winter and 150-160
degrees in summer. Not surprisingly, these were the years when
railroad unions were formed and began to gain acceptance. Grad-
ually the lives of railroad workers began to improve.
Storm Clouds on the Railroads' Horizon
The pendulum began swinging a bit faster when the country's rail-
roads were nationalized during World War I and major conces-
sions to the unions were agreed to by the government. Many of
the new rules made sense at the time. For instance, an eight-hour
day was established as a standard for railroad employees—but
at the same time the government also agreed that a distance of
100 miles would constitute a full day's work for a train's operat-
ing crew. In those early days, that was realistic. Operating one
of those early steam locomotives was exhausting work, and with
stops along the route for watering and coaling, it could easily take
a full eight hours to travel 100 miles. But by the 1920s—long
after the railroads had been returned to private ownership—the
technology of steam locomotives had become more efficient, and
trains were being run at much higher speeds. The railroads were
not able to change or get rid of the old union rules, and they often
found themselves giving a train crew four days' pay for eight hours
of work because their train covered 400 miles during that time.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search