| Beginning With: "H" |
| HACK |
Caboose |
| HALF |
Period of two weeks |
| HAM |
Poor telegrapher or student |
| HAND BOMBER or HAND GRENADE |
Engine without automatic stoker, which is hand-fired |
| HAND-ON |
Train order or company mail caught with the hoop or without stopping |
| HANGING UP THE CLOCK |
Boomer term that meant hocking your railroad watch |
| HARNESS |
Passenger trainman's uniform |
| HASH HOUSE |
Railroad restaurant or lunch stand |
| HAT |
Ineffectual railroad man. (All he uses his head for is a hat rack) |
| HAY |
Sleep on the job; any kind of sleep. Caboose was sometimes called hay wagon |
| HAY BURNER |
Hand oil lantern, inspection torch. Also a horse used in railroad or streetcar service |
| HEAD IN |
Take a sidetrack when meeting an opposing train |
| HEAD MAN |
Front brakeman on a freight train who rides the engine cab. Also called head pin |
| HEAD-END REVENUE |
Money which railroads receive for hauling mail, express, baggage, newspapers, and milk in cans, usually transported in cars nearest the locomotive, these commodities or shipments being known as head-end traffic |
| HEARSE |
Caboose |
| HEEL |
Cars on end of tracks with brakes applied |
| HERDER |
Man who couples engines and takes them off upon arrival and departure of trains |
| HIGH IRON |
Main line or high-speed track (which is laid with heavier rail than that used on unimportant branches or spurs) |
| HIGH LINER |
Main-line fast passenger train |
| HIGH-DADDY |
Flying switch |
| HIGH-WHEELER |
Passenger engine or fast passenger train. Also highball artist |
| HIGHBALL |
Signal made by waving hand or lamp in a high, wide semicircle, meaning "Come ahead" or "Leave town" or "Pick up full speed." Verb highball or phrase 'ball the jack means to make a fast run. Word highball originated from old-time ball signal on post, raised aloft by pulley when track was clear. A very few of these are still in service, in New England and elsewhere |
| HIGHBALL ARTIST |
A locomotive engineer known for fast running |
| HIKER |
A lineman who "hikes sticks" instead of prosaically climbing poles |
| HIT 'ER |
Work an engine harder. (Probably a variation of "hit the ball," which means "Get busy-no more fooling!") |
| HIT THE GRIT or GRAVEL |
Fall off a car or locomotive or get kicked off |
| HOBO |
Tramp. Term is said to have originated on Burlington Route as a corruption of "Hello, boy!" which construction workers used in greeting one another |
| HOG |
Any large locomotive, usually freight. An engineer may be called a hogger, hoghead, hogmaster, hoggineer, hog jockey, hog eye, grunt, pig-mauler, etc. Some few engineers object to such designations as disrespectful, which they rarely are. For meaning of hog law see dogcatchers. Hoghead is said to have originated on the Denver & Rio Grande in 1887, being used to label a brakeman's caricature of an engineer |
| HOLDING HER AGAINST THE BRASS |
Running electric car at full speed |
| HOLE |
Passing track where one train pulls in to meet another |
| HOME GUARD |
Employee who stays with one railroad, as contrasted with boomer. A homesteader is a boomer who gets married and settles down |
| HOOK |
Wrecking crane or auxiliary |
| HOOK 'ER UP AND PULL HER TAIL |
To set the reverse lever up on the quadrant and pull the throttle well out for high speed |
| HOPPER |
Steel-sided car with a bottom that opens to allow unloading of coal, gravel, etc. |
| HOPTOAD |
Derail |
| HORSE 'ER OVER |
Reverse the engine. This is done by compressed air on modern locomotives, but in early days, manually operated reversing equipment required considerable jockeying to reverse an engine while in motion |
| HOSE COUPLER |
Brakeman who handles trains by himself with the road engine around a big passenger terminal |
| HOSTLER |
Any employee (usually a fireman) who services engines, especially at division points and terminals. Also called ashpit engineer |
| HOT |
Having plenty of steam pressure (applied to locomotives) |
| HOT JEWEL |
Same as hotbox |
| HOT WORKER |
Boilermaker who repairs leaks in the firebox or flue sheet while there is pressure in the boiler |
| HOT-FOOTER |
Engineer or conductor in switching service who is always in a hurry |
| HOT-WATER BOTTLE |
Elesco feed water heater |
| HOTBOX |
Overheated journal or bearing. Also called hub. This was a frequent cause of delay in the old days but is virtually nonexistent on trains that are completely equipped with ball-bearings. Trainmen are sometimes called hotbox detectors |
| HOTSHOT |
Fast train; frequently a freight made up of merchandise and perishables. Often called a manifest or redball run |
| HOW MANY EMS HAVE YOU GOT? |
How many thousand pounds of tonnage is your engine pulling? (M stands for 1,000) |
| HUMP |
Artificial knoll at end of classification yard over which cars are pushed so that they can roll on their own momentum to separate tracks. (See drop.) Also the summit of a hill division or the top of a prominent grade. Boomers generally referred to the Continental Divide as the Hump |
| HUMPBACK JOB |
Local freight run. (Conductor spends much time in caboose bending over his wheel reports) |
| HUT |
Brakeman's shelter just back of the coal bunkers on the tender tank of engines operating through Moffat Tunnel. May also refer to caboose, locomotive cab, switchman's shanty, or crossing watchman's shelter |
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