Air Brakes on the Alberta Coal Branch

It was nearly 20 below on a cloudless November night, We had picked up our phosphate rock train at the mine and were making about 25 or 30 mph along the undulating track of the Alberta Coal Branch.  The fireman leaned forward and told me to lace up my boots and get my parka and mitts on.   

"You gotta go back and put up the retainers", he said.   

I smiled, and said, "I'll be ready to go when the train stops".

"You don't understand" he said, "Get your gear on now and get going.”   “The train isn't going to
stop".

"It will stop if there's going to be any retainers put on," I said.

I have done some pretty scary things in my career, but going 'over top' from one cross-hopper to another while putting up retainers ranks among the most frightening things I could imagine. There are no handrails up there…just an eight inch wide, frost-covered steel cap on the side walls of the open top cars that were waddling along in the dark, Rocky Mountain Foothills.

 Photo courtesy Ray Matthews (see page 41 CNLines SIG vol. 10, number 4.)

***The smoke was common on trains descending long grades.  The brake shoes got so hot they'd turn the wheels blue.  Sometimes, we'd have to stop for twenty minutes to let them cool down so the wheels wouldn't fracture and break up.***

I soon realized that perhaps I was just being a 'chicken'.  If was really true, as the engine crew insisted that brakemen had been putting on retainers 'on the fly' on The Branch for years and not a single fatality had been reported....well, there must be a way to do it alright.  I'd figure it out, I thought as I stepped out of the warm cab into the frozen night.  Flipping the switch on my trusty trainman’s lantern, I stabbed the feeble light into the darkness looking for the best way to get myself from the rear platform of the locomotive and onto the ladder on the end of the car.  Shaking off the vision of my body laying between the rails in numerous pieces after I had fallen from the top of one of those bouncing, twisting, rocking cars, I leaned out and grabbed at the nearest hand rail. 

My hand found a hand rail on the car and held on tightly.  Swinging across the void between the engine and the car, I planted my boots on a ladder rung and immediately "gave thanks."

I knew how retaining valves, or “retainers” worked….sort of.  Lots of railroaders had mentioned them; told stories about using them on steep grades long before the advent of modern brake systems.  They always finished their stories with "But, you know...we don't have to use 'em anymore since they got the new 26L brake valves on the engines".  Well, here I was trying to keep my balance on the top of a pile of crushed rock in an old steel open-top hopper that was jolting down the track in the middle of nowhere.  Where were those old railroaders with their stories now?  

Retaining valves are just a little piece of equipment.  They’re a small metal valve with a smallish diameter pipe coming out of the bottom and running to somewhere in the brake apparatus within the steel framework that supports the end of the car above the trucks that house the big steel wheels that carry the whole thing on the rails.  On the side of the valve, is a small handle that pivots at the top and can be set at “off”, “low” or “high” pressure settings. 

Its function is to trap a bit of air in the air brake system so that, when the brakes have been applied and then released, a small amount of “brake effort” is retained on that individual cars’ brake system until it's released by returning the valves handle to the "off" position once again.  Retainers were used when heavy trains, such as aloaded  Rock trains like this one from Cadomin Alberta could be safely brought down long steep grades by maintaining some brake effect on the train all the while recharging the air in the train's brake pipe and reservoirs.  The idea is to keep the train speed under control, thus preventing runaways that would result in demerits being handed out to the crew, or worse.

Normally, the train would be stopped a safe distance from the top of the hill prior to descending the grade.  At this time, the trainmen would start out from both ends of the train, climbing each  ladder to the brake platform and setting the retainers.   Generally, this meant a delay of from twenty minutes to three quarters of an hour depending on the length of train, weather conditions, etc.  The same thing would happen at the bottom of the hill after safely descending the grade.  The train would be stopped and the trainmen would return to their respective ends of the train, all the while replacing the retainers handles to the normal, or “off” position. 

This procedure was what the Uniform Code of Operating Rules called for.  This procedure was what any mother would want her son to do under the circumstances.  But this was not what this Coal Branch crew did.  They “put up” and “took down” retainers “on the fly” no matter what the conditions, the time of day or the season.  On the fly!...  I have to tell you that I was terrified and was quite sure that I would not survive the night; because I had fallen from the top of a wildly swaying car.

I desperately clung to the frozen steel of those cars with phosphate dust burning my eyes and frost stinging my ears.  Fumbling in the dark, and focusing on getting this job done...one car at a time, I eventually came upon the tail end brakeman.  He had completed his share of the job and was standing on the drawbars in between the cars, holding onto a grab iron with one hand while he smoked a cigarette with the other.    Together, we  huddled in silence in the blowing snow and dust, choking on the thick brake smoke while we waited for the train to settle out at the bottom of the hill. Once there, we parted company, that brakeman and I; he headed off through the thick brake smoke toward the caboose, removing retainers from each car as he went.  And I headed back toward the engine, doing the same.





After I put the engine on the shop track in Edson, I gathered my kit from the locomotive cab and headed across the rail yard toward the office.   The conductor was waiting for me in the booking-in room at the station.

Leaning a bit in my direction, he said "If you're not goin' to cooperate with me son, you needn't bother takin' a call for the 'Branch' again".  “You Jasper boys aren’t welcome here cuz you don’t want to do as you’re told”, he said as he turned his head and spit a long black streak of tobacco juice toward the trash can in the corner.  Tobacco juice ran in a jagged track down the papers that had been discarded there.

“I won’t be back if I can help it”, I said, coldly.  I felt sure that it would be better to be laid off and taking unemployment benefits than to take a call to join his crew on the Branch again.

Snow swirled into the room as the door closed behind him. 

I sat down on a long, hard bench in the passenger waiting room of the station to wait for a westbound freight train to take me back to Jasper and my warm bed.