Railroad Usage
The term also applied to the walkways on top of railroad boxcars. Originally, they were used by brakemen to travel from car to car to apply hand-operated brakes. With the adoption of the air brake this practice was abandoned. However the running board was still used as an observation point to pass hand signals to the train engineer when cars were being switched. The increased use of radio communication made this unnecessary. Today it is forbidden for anyone to be on top of a freight car while the train is in motion.
Read more about this topic: Running Board
Famous quotes containing the words railroad and/or usage:
“Though the railroad and the telegraph have been established on the shores of Maine, the Indian still looks out from her interior mountains over all these to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)