Before portable electric lights, did the railroads have a way to illuminate something like the area where they were clearing a wreck?

Making an educated guess, torches, bonfires or waiting till sunrise were really the only options for wide area illumination.

Even a borrowed oil headlight from a locomotive was not that bright.

Rich C.

In the military, our night vision goggles constantly broke down or the batteries died. You'd be surprised how the eye can adjust to total darkness out in the wild. We did a lot of stuff in utter darkness because we could see good enough to make things happen when they couldn't wait.
They'd only have had lanterns back then and I bet the truly heavy lifting didn't happen until the sun came up.

That's it, Lee - lanterns for rescuing, then wait until sunrise to start digging in for real. Wreck trains didn't rush to the site, they meandered generally with a worn out old freight hog or yardgoat that the roundhouse foreman could spare for a while in charge.

The British and Canadians used Tilley brand (FL-6) pressurized kerosene floodlights. Kind of hard to find here in the U.S.

The old Kerosene locomotive headlights can throw a significant amount of light. I recall Dan Markoff commenting about how surprised he was the first night he operated the EUREKA -- the headlight threw out much more light than he expected.

I have seen photos of locomotive (or similar steamboat) headlights being used to illuminate old construction sites.

If properly set up the flame of the Kerosene lamp is at the focal point of the parabolic reflector -- this will reflect all the light forward.

It is a good question. I would not be surprised if there were some rather innovative portable, large scale lighting equipment used in applications involving emergency nighttime work. I am not sure about the timeline for the use and application of electricity.

Not railway related but a group I'm affiliated with, one of their a horse drawn steam powered pumpers is equipped with a large Carbide / Acetylene Gas fueled searchlight.

The light is about the size of a medium sized round trash can and is mounted on a swivel to the rear of the bench seat. In operation when the flame is properly adjusted the light throws a surprisingly large amount of illumination.

Some folks in the group have also located and resorted carbide hand lanterns for on the pumper also.

Trackside illumination :)

Does the Eureka have the old style whale oil headlight or is a more modern hot blast type kerosene? it is like comparing a candle to a 40W bulb.

Remember the early headlights were not built so the engine crew could see, they were to warn anything ahead to get out of the way.

Rich C.

I was at an auction in Corry, PA in 2015 that featured a lot of railroadiana. Amongst the offering were one or two sheet metal "wreck" lights. At least that is how they were sold.

It was basically a truncated circular cone made of sheetmetal with a solid bottom and open top, about 3' tall, maybe 12" at the bottom and 6" at the top.

It was explained that they would set these around the wrecksite at night and water was put in them along with Calcium Carbide, and the acetylene gas that was generated was burned off at the top.

Looking at my 1904 copy of W.M. Camp's Notes on Track, a typical block and tool car for a wreck train on Pennsylvania Lines West include "two Wells lights, 30 hand torches, 6 Cox torches, each arranged to set upon a staff"... whatever "Wells lights" and "Cox torches" are. I think "Cox torches" may be lighting related, not merely an Ox-Acetylene cutting torch.

Upon further looking in this book.... there is a drawing of what is called a "Buckeye Torch"... and more valuable description... so let me just attach photos of the text

R.C. Whitehead

I hadn't thought about using wreckage to fuel more of the bonfire, but it makes perfect sense.

It's why wrecking derricks had big lights on the house and the boom.

A 'Cox torch' is a welding torch. There are references to them in many of the Google Books 'contemporary' periodicals, and I believe in older editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Note the reference to portable arc-light setup. Naturally this entailed considerably more capital investment than a few pumped Wells lights -- which seem to work similar to the principle of the hot-air burners used in balloons. Anyone familiar with the flame these produce will not question their brightness even on stormy nights...

I think there would need to be a better burner arrangement on top of the 'conical' wreck light if it were using acetylene. You don't need a very large mass flow to get the relatively bright light an acetylene burner provides ... but you need to take care to avoid 'carbonization'. Google up editions of the Acetylene Journal for all the practical detail you can stand...

Coleman began selling lanterns in 1900. They used gasoline and gave bright white light in a barium impregnated mantle. I have seen Coleman lanterns kept in streetcar system wreckers. They were used when the trolley wire was down and the power was off.