Heres a quick fact. Did you know that on Pere Marquette's tender there is no hand brake? So a few questions arise from that:
1) Did 1225 EVER have a hand brake (for my laziness "hand brake" will now be "HB")
2) If so, when was the HB removed?
3) Did any of the PM berkshires have a HB?
4) Does NKP 765 have a HB?
Thanks for the help! Only my second day and my head is stuffed with info!

Very few steam locomotive were originally built with tender hand brakes. I could be wrong but, if an engine had a leaky throttle, the brakes on the tender wouldn't be enough to keep it in place.

Well the reason I thought of this was of a comment I heard. I thought it would be more common because if the tenders are ever detached, you wouldn’t have to put wood or stoppers on the track to prevent it from moving.

The governing regulation are the power brake rules published in 49 CFR 231.17 "Specifications common to all steam locomotives" and reads as follows:

(a) Hand brakes.

(1) Hand brakes will not be required on locomotives nor on tenders when attached to locomotives.

(2) If tenders are detached from locomotives and used in special service, they shall be equipped with efficient hand brakes.

Most diesels are equipped with hand brakes but it is only relatively recently that the federal regulations have required such.

Alan Maples

Okay, thanks for the info! I guess that takes care of my other questions.

I don't remember a hand brake on 765. Leaky throttle, put the johnson bar in the other direction, then middle.

Some historical background (as in what was actually around, not necessarily why it was so):

Very, very early (1830s) supposedly relied on hand brakes on cars and even boys employed to poke sticks into spokes to stop trains at stations; says something about how railroading still hadn't thought out everything, as well as the low cost of labor back then!

Later, tenders had handbrakes, and of course so did freight cars; fireman had the brake job on the tender, along with the usual wiping and polishing all that brass in this era (1840s--1870s).

Handbrakes seem to have disappeared on most locomotives with the introduction of air, but some old engines never did get engine brakes, and such a locomotive was said to be "barefoot."

There was some fuss against the introduction of air, mostly based on expense (apparently a concern about anything that affected profits is nothing new), but also concerns about boiler capacity and feeding an air compressor, too, expressed as an opinion that the locomotive was meant to pull trains, not stop them (maybe a little bit of truth to this when you take a look at an old 4-4-0 like B&Os 25, and see just how small those old engines are).

Normal stowing proceedure for modern steam (i.e., anything from the 1890s on) would be to close the throttle completely, center the valve gear, open the cylinder cocks, and either chock or chain the drivers. I recall two of Ross Rowland's engines (AFT 1, ex Reading T-1 2101, and C&O J3a 614) having lengths of steel rod connected by a chain fore and aft of individual drivers when on exhibit or in a roundhouse.

Alfred W. Bruce (chief locomotive designer at Alco late in the steam eara), in his book "The Steam Locomotive in America," recalled that engines with leaky throttles or other problems that cause locos to move while unattended were called "night crawlers." He also recounted the experiences of one railroad that had engines that did this because of contraction problems; as the lengthy boiler on one of this series of 4-8-2s would cool down during a longer layover, its throttle rod would shrink faster than the boiler, which had the effect of opening the throttle slightly. Unless the cylinder cocks were open and the drivers chained, the engine would move. Needless to say, this was a cause of consternation and required a modification of the throttle and its rod to accomodate a set of compensating levers in the linkage.

While this engineering was going on, one of the locomotives got sent on a line that normally didn't see them, and had to be placed in a roundhouse with stalls that were a bit short. This required running the locomotive into the roundhouse as far as it would go, right up to the wheel stops this house had. This also put the stack ahead of the smokejack and under a part of the roof that was a bit low. The employees were not familiar with the series' "night crawling" tendencies, and didn't chain the drivers, nor did they open the cylinder cocks. The throttle rod shrank, the throttle opened, and pressure built in the cylinders, but the engine couldn't move because of the wheel stops. Eventually the pressure built up enough that the engine attempted to start, and of course slipped. In the process, the resulting high-pressure exhaust blew a hole in the low roof.

At least, that's the story as Bruce related it.

I've heard stories of these 'night-crawlers' crawling their way through the back wall of which ever roundhouse they happen to be in too...

The 614 as delivered by Lima was not equipped with a hand brake.

During her "upgrade" in 1998 in the locomotive shop of NJTransit in Kearny NJ along with the Union Switch&Signal cab signal system she was outfitted with a modern rotating wheel hand brake on her tender. Included in the handbrake set-up is a red warning light in the cab which lights up when the handbrake is applied. It adds another safety dimension to the locomotive and is a welcomed addition.

My understanding as to why these modern steam locomotives were not factory equipped with a hand brake is that chocking the wheels had become such standard industry practice by then that it was thought that a handbrake was unneeded??

Ross Rowland

Thanks everypne for helping me out! Ross, that does make sense, why put a handbrake on a tender when theres already a solution.

Some of the Santa Fe modern power must have had tender brake wheels.

On page 317 of Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Trail (Southwest Railroad Historical Society, Dallas, 1965) there is this bit of information:

I can't say how typical these are for the rest of SP engines, but the two we have, SP2353, 4-6-0, built 1912; and SD&AE 104, 2-8-0, built 1904, both have hand brakes on their tenders. They are pretty rudimentary: just a wheel on the end of a shaft that the chain winds up on. No gearing, like newer freight or passenger cars.

When we were running 2353, 10 years ago, the two old heads who ran her back in the '40's and '50's who taught us how to run it, told us they used the hand brakes sort of like retainers. When running down hill, lite engine, they'd set the independent, then tie down the hand brake on the tender using a brake club, then release the independent. That kept the wear off of the driver tires and brake shoes. To keep the brakes and wheels cool on the tender, they had some 1/2" pipes rigged up from the lower part of the water cistern that would run a slow stream of water on the brake shoes.

To prevent it them from being "night crawlers," 2353 & 104 were equipped with "runaway valves." There were short pipes, 3/4" or 1" diameter on the steam pipes, just above the steam chests. A valve on the ends of these pipes opened to the atmosphere, so when opened, no pressure could build up in the steam chest. Part of our shut-down check list was to be sure they were open.

I certainly can't say if the brakes or runaway valves were original or added at some time by SP. For sure, they were on the locomotives when they were retired in the mid '50's.

One last thing, the cyl cocks on 2353 were steam operated.