Dictionary

brakesman en · NOUN

Etymology

From brake + -s- + -man.

Meanings

1. Someone who operates the winch in a mine.
2. A brakeman; a railroad employee responsible for a train's brakes, couplings etc.
   • [...] their speed (which was not supposed to exceed 10 m.p.h. normally, and less when the train was heavy or the weather was bad) was regulated by brakesmen known as "bank-riders." 1942 May-June, “Cable Operation at Liverpool and London”, in Railway Magazine, page 177:
   • And some time after becoming naturalized, in one of his letters, he wrote that he was a brakesman on the Great Western R.R., (in Canada--promoted from the U.G.R.R.,) the result of being under the protection of the British Lion. 1872, William Still, The Underground Railroad:
   • Leisurely we moved forward--reached the head of the train--then Andrews, Brown our engineer, and Knight, who also could run an engine, leaped on the locomotive; Alfred Wilson took the top of the cars as brakesman, and the remainder of us clambered into the foremost baggage car, which, with two others, had been previously uncoupled from the hinder part of the train. 1863, William Pittenger, Daring and Suffering:
   • The young man on the ranch later said he was tenant in charge of the place for Mitchell Robertson, who owned it, but who was then working on the train as a brakesman out of Calgary. 1921, R.G. MacBeth, Policing the Plains:
   • When the trains meet, the points of the loop are operated from the lineside by the trainmen or brakesmen specially carried for this job. 1959 October, J. N. Westwood, “The Railways of Canada: Part One”, in Trains Illustrated, page 500:

Forms