Roof Walks

Painted car color.

The only ones I ever used were just painted with the same paint used on the car. No tar or anything else on them.

Notice I said "used."  When I hired on the P&LE back in 1966, we still used them to pass hand signals to the head end on long cuts. No radios then.

@Greg2 posted:

Back in the days when they had them, how were wooden roofwalks finished?  Painted?  Left unfinished?  Tarred?  None of these sound promising from the footing standpoint.  Modelling a PRR ND cabin car and would like to get it right.

I would say the PRR ones would match the painting for the era.

If the era you are modeling has the entire cabin car including the roof in freight car red then the running board would be FCR.

If it is the era of the black roof then they would be black.

And then there's the effect of cinders and steam and ballast dust on the cleanliness of the roof.

Hard to imagine a more dangerous job than a brakeman walking on roof walks of moving trains, and also jumping from car to car in the process. No telling how many of them were severely injured or killed while doing that. I don't know if they also did that in wet weather, or in the winter, but I don't know how they could with any degree of safety.   

@Rich Melvin posted:

The only ones I ever used were just painted with the same paint used on the car. No tar or anything else on them.

Notice I said "used."  When I hired on the P&LE back in 1966, we still used them to pass hand signals to the head end on long cuts. No radios then.

During all of my railroading, I never had to stand atop a moving car. I can't imagine how difficult that could be under many circumstances.

Plus, the added responsibility for the Engineer: The slightest slack could cause the crewmen atop the cars to soil their pants! (Or worse.)

The closest I've come to crewmen standing atop moving cars was handling long trains of ties being set out at about a constant 5 MPH. My job as Engineer was to keep absolutely ZERO slack in the train so as to not cause the MOW Foreman/workers to lose their balance.

Here's some pics I snapped back in the years before cell phones were not allowed that help to illustrate such an operation:

In the above pic, we were just about wrapping up a full day of tie spreading. There's several empty gons behind the other side of the car topper.

Here's a pic a day earlier in the day as I was clicking along at track speed with the train, Foreman, and car topper headed for another drop zone:

I successfully managed the slack so that I did not cause issues with the standing Foreman. However, later in the day, he did manage to trip himself and sat on his butt on a tie by stepping backwards without looking and tripped over said tie. His bad, not mine!

Andre

When I was a kid I often walked atop standing freight cars  ( boxcars and covered hoppers)  that were set out on a branch line lead  which extended across a high trestle.  The only way to the other side of the trestle was to climb up a car and walk along the tops of the cut of cars parked on the trestle.     Some cars had wooden walkways while others had a grated steel walkways.  The grated steel walkway allowed better traction in wet weather.  

When the way freight came into town, I would often see brakeman passing hand signals from atop boxcars,  rain or shine.  A very dangerous job for sure on of fairest weather days,  and significantly more dangerous on wet/snow weather days!  

@laming posted:

...Plus, the added responsibility for the Engineer: The slightest slack could cause the crewmen atop the cars to soil their pants! (Or worse.)

On the P&LE, we switched WITHOUT air! The only brakes were on the engines. So the slack ran in and out every time we started or stopped. I learned to stand a little sideways to deal with it. Easier to keep your balance that way.

This all happened back when I was young and stupid, and memories fade with the years. However, I don't recall any nasty incidents from riding on top. I did it almost every day for several years, switching in the P&LE Gateway Yard in Struthers, Ohio..

@Rich Melvin posted:

On the P&LE, we switched WITHOUT air! The only brakes were on the engines. So the slack ran in and out every time we started or stopped. I learned to stand a little sideways to deal with it. Easier to keep your balance that way.

This all happened back when I was young and stupid, and memories fade with the years. However, I don't recall any nasty incidents from riding on top. I did it almost every day for several years, switching in the P&LE Gateway Yard in Struthers, Ohio..

Oh me... no air.  Yes, a bit spread legged fore/aft would certainly help.

So many very risky job tasks were "common" back decades ago.

How did we survive our "young and and invincible" years?

I remember several of my "close calls" (and close calls not of my doing) that could have ended really badly, but somehow got away with it without incident.

Andre

On the B&O WOODEN roof walks (and caboose end platforms) were unpainted wood, because painted wood is slippery when wet. Not long ago, I was up on the roof of B&O caboose C-2013, and can assure you the wooden roof walk has never been painted. I'll include a photo of it in the shop at the Wilmington & Western RR.

Open grate metal roof walks are a different story. I assume they were painted.

Thanks everyone for your responses and shared memories.  I shouldn't have been surprised that there was no one practice that covered all roads and times.

As for my issue--I am modelling a PRR ND cabin car, but it's going into service on the Northern Central.  The equipment supervisor of the road  (who likes the look of a red car and a black roof) has issued a directive that the roof shall be black and the walks to match.

Open grate ("Blaw-Knox") roof walks could be painted, and sometimes they were.  But they were constructed of galvanized steel, and it was not uncommon to see ones which had been painted with patches of the paint gone.

Now that I think of it the wooden ones were also to peeling paint, due to sun beating down on them and rain soaking the wood, as well as being walked on.

A friend who was in Train Service where I worked recalls that, when he was a student Switchman, he noticed that it appeared to be raining, which was not normal for southern California in summer.  Then he saw a Switchman up on a boxcar roof walk, passing signals while urinating on the roof.