What is/was the worst job on the railway?

[Islineclear3_1]

Where does/did the refilling of signal paraffin lamps appear in the "hall of fame" of worst jobs?

 

[yorksrob]

Where does/did the refilling of signal paraffin lamps appear in the "hall of fame" of worst jobs?

I suppose it depends on whether said lamps were at a pleasent country junction, or in the middle of Woodhead tunnel !

 

[Islineclear3_1]

I suppose it depends on whether said lamps were at a pleasent country junction, or in the middle of Woodhead tunnel !

Har har, and whether it was in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, precitipating down - or on a nice spring/summer's day

Still, I expect it was dry in Woodhead tunnel...

 

[yorksrob]

Har har, and whether it was in the middle of winter, in the middle of the night, precitipating down - or on a nice spring/summer's day

Still, I expect it was dry in Woodhead tunnel...

Yeah, it would have had that going for it !

 

[387star]

I remember cleaning excrement off toilet walls at bognor aged 22 wheb I started on the railways at night. Not fun... much better at the pointy end

 

[Gloster]

Where does/did the refilling of signal paraffin lamps appear in the "hall of fame" of worst jobs?

My first railway job was described as a ‘Lampman’, although as I only had five lamps to tend (all buffer stop ones) it was mostly all the bits and pieces that didn’t fit into other jobs. I started by emptying bins, then picking the dog-ends out of the sand-drag, cleaning the panel box floor, acting as a runner, etc. Only then did I get around to the lamps twice a week. Me, my uniform and just about everything else ended up smelling of paraffin.

Later on, as a signalman, I occasionally had to go out to relight a signal lamp that had gone out. As this was usually out of hours, it was often dark, and in the rain and wind. Trying to hang on to the top of a signal post, open the housing, get the lamp out, open it, adjust it and then relight it when you only have two hands is no easy task. Much better to climb down to the ground and deal with it there.

 

[yorksrob]

My first railway job was described as a ‘Lampman’, although as I only had five lamps to tend (all buffer stop ones) it was mostly all the bits and pieces that didn’t fit into other jobs. I started by emptying bins, then picking the dog-ends out of the sand-drag, cleaning the panel box floor, acting as a runner, etc. Only then did I get around to the lamps twice a week. Me, my uniform and just about everything else ended up smelling of paraffin.

Later on, as a signalman, I occasionally had to go out to relight a signal lamp that had gone out. As this was usually out of hours, it was often dark, and in the rain and wind. Trying to hang on to the top of a signal post, open the housing, get the lamp out, open it, adjust it and then relight it when you only have two hands is no easy task. Much better to climb down to the ground and deal with it there.

That sounds quite nasty. Whenabouts did they get rid of the parafin for electric ?

 

[Dr Hoo]

My first railway job was described as a ‘Lampman’, although as I only had five lamps to tend (all buffer stop ones) it was mostly all the bits and pieces that didn’t fit into other jobs. I started by emptying bins, then picking the dog-ends out of the sand-drag, cleaning the panel box floor, acting as a runner, etc. Only then did I get around to the lamps twice a week. Me, my uniform and just about everything else ended up smelling of paraffin.

Later on, as a signalman, I occasionally had to go out to relight a signal lamp that had gone out. As this was usually out of hours, it was often dark, and in the rain and wind. Trying to hang on to the top of a signal post, open the housing, get the lamp out, open it, adjust it and then relight it when you only have two hands is no easy task. Much better to climb down to the ground and deal with it there.

Lamping on a rough night was an awful (and scary) job.

In one post our local (daytime) lampman was a bit of a law unto himself and didn't seem to book on with anyone so no-one was initially aware that he had 'blown out' for a shift. The signal lamps had large enough reservoirs for a week and thus typically started running out on the night after the seventh day. On a night shift as Traffic Inspector you dreaded the first call from a signaller that one of his lamps was out because that meant that the whole lot would need doing.

Lugging a heavy paraffin can along the ballast, with Bardic lamp in the other hand, in railway 'black mac' in the pouring rain was no fun at all as it could be a couple of miles to walk just to do one box-worth. Climbing up a 60-foot ladder in a gale, in total darkness, on your own, no safety harness, was no fun at all. Obviously one was 'supposed' to bring the empty lamp down, fill it and take it back up again but that obviously meant climbing each signal twice. So sometimes it was a case of climbing single handed, with the can in the 'free' hand and dealing with it all at the top while leaning back on the 'ring'. Un-doing the mac to shield the wind from the precious flame.

It would heavier been better if there was a 'float' of spare lamps for an 'exchange' system but needless to say it was a random mix of non-interchangeable pre-grouping, LMS and BR equipment.

The things one did as a supervisor to keep the job running.

 

[eldomtom2]

Much more seriously, railways were dangerous places to work. Theodore Rothstein's From Chartism to Labourism gives annual figures from 1897 to 1912: the lowest annual figure for fatal and non-fatal accidents were 372 and 12 979; the highest were 631 and 28 200; the number of fatal accidents dropped during that period, but non-fatal ones doubled. Fatal accidents on the railways accounted for on average 12 per cent of the national total; non-fatal injuries between 15 and 20 per cent. I don't have figures for later years; it will be interesting to see figures for the railways for the whole twentieth century, with a breakdown of the various jobs of those involved. One suspects that shunters, especially those working at night in barely lit yards, suffered badly.

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica has detailed figures for 1907 and 1908. I would not put too much stock in the figures of non-fatal accidents doubling - this is likely to be a result of increased reporting. Detailed statstics do exist for other years, but as far as I am aware have not been made publicly available - union records for death compensation could also be a good source.

What is surprising to modern eyes is how relatively low a priority safety was among unions - they made some noises about automatic couplings around the turn of the century, but from WW1 on it was pretty much dropped from at least the national agenda. Attitudes were different back then, even for workers, and pay and hours seem to have taken priority - the logic presumably being that they affected everybody, while even in the worst periods for safety even a shunter or platelayer still had around a 4 in 5 chance of surviving until retirement.

 

[Scotrail84]

Shunting, its really hard graft and one false move could be your last.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

Before modern-day automatic couplings, what about coupling/uncoupling in the middle of winter, including raising dropped buckeyes and connecting vacuum pipes etc?