"Why Risk Your Life?" -- 1940s Railroad Safety Film
516,300
Published 2013-01-10
Watch them getting on and off moving equipment, making drops, pulling pins, aligning couplers, lining switches, coupling air hoses and similar switching activities. See what was considered unsafe THEN and what was CONSIDERED SAFE back then that is now considered UNSAFE. Modern day railroad safety officers and trainmasters should probably NOT watch this video, lest they pass out or have a heart attack. It's not for the faint of heart or those who never worked under the old rules and safety instructions. LOL.
Beyond the safety aspect, the film is a wonderful insight to old railroad operations, clothing, steam locomotives, and railroad cars and equipment from log ago fallen flag railroads.
All Comments (21)
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Nothing like a safety video that was actually dangerous to film. What a gem.
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I worked two summers in a CB&Q car shop. One rule in the yellow book was along the lines of "Use a drift pin, not your fingers, to align metal plates." I could imagine someone saying, "Not close enough, hit it again" and having a finger guillotined off." One saying was "Every rule is the result of a fool" and another was "The rules are written in blood."
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I worked on a railroad. It's easy to get injured, or worse, when you lose your fear of the right of way and the trains. It happens.
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I love the way the line is delivered about the employees returning from lunch not being in a hurry lol. 80 years ago and some things don’t change :)
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Those veteran railroaders had a ball making this film. How often do you get to goof off on the job with the Company's blessing!
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Watching these safety films is a lot more entertaining than today's movies.
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Brakeman's job was alot more dangerous back then
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What's interesting is the way many examples of doing things the 'safe' way are themselves now banned. Locomotives no longer have footboards, Walkways on the roofs of cars were removed in the late 1960s. They do call out stepping on the railhead sometimes but let it slide at other times. That's one thing we were constantly cautioned about at CN. Good to see this here my old VHS copy is no longer playable.
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"You, young man, are surely carrying signals for the ambulance!" "It's all wrong and bad practice!" words to live by
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In 1994 I worked for ConRail. I worked in transportation as a brakeman/conductor. There are so many ways to die or get maimed. I had several close calls.
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15 feet beyond the car, not only so you have warning if it starts to move, but so you also have a safety margin to stop and check and make sure the second track is also clear. that way you have time to stop and look, and even if there IS a train coming AND the car you were walking around starts to move, you have time to go back. Otherwise you either need to jump out of the way of the first car, possibly into the path of a second, or you stop to avoid the second just as the first starts to move. I am not a huge fan of obsessive safety, but I also believe in a healthy respect for danger, and I cannot picture getting complacent around a rail line, or any heavy equipment.
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Wow no spray paint on the box cars! Love the video's.
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The old films are the best. They are well written, concise, easy to understand and the narrators speak well. I'd love to go back in time again when there weren't so many laws and didn't need them.
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Now I understand why so many retired railroaders are nicknamed, Gimpy, Limpy or Stumpy. !!! Great video.
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“The law of gravity needs no courts to enforce it!” (13:55)
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"Hey Henry, we need to violate every safety rule we have for the purpose of making a training film. You might get injured but more than likely, as in real life, you won't." Henry: "Sign me up."
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Boxcar handbrakes were some scary shit
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When I found this I began watching to learn "why". A girl I had a crush on in 5th grade had lost her dad 2 years before in a 1943 yard accident..He was a brakeman and with wartime hustle to move military supplies,, I think I have seen the cause at about 1635. He fell off of a moving car during switching ops. Sharon survived pretty well but her older brother never got over losing his dad. Thankx for putting this up.
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Ahhhh, this reminds me of Durand Michigan a very large terminal for good old steam engines and trains. A small town , but with a very big train yard. My dad was the Grand Trunk doctor and seen many of these railroad injuries ...Boy, did this bring back great memories...
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For anyone wondering, the shot of Minneapolis at 1:18 is the Stone Arch Bridge with the downtown skyline in the background. The train came from the Great Northern Depot in downtown. The bridge is now used by pedestrians and bikers, and the Great Northern Depot was demolished in 1985. The Federal Reserve Building now sits where the depot was. The skyline looks very different back then. Its nice that the Empire Builder serves Union Depot in St. Paul again, now if the trains could just run on time.
