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Comment by tvmalsv | Hacker News Reader

Ya, I remember those. My friends and I would always wave to the cabooseman (I doubt that's the right word, but I really like it) as it went by, and he would usually wave back at us.

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In Britain, he'd be called a guard or brake-man, and rode in the brake van.

The US probably has a different term.

In the U.S. that would the train's rear conductor or a brakeman, basically the conductor's assistants. In the days before vacuum brakes the rear conductor would have the job of reading lantern messages from the front conductor (in the locomotive) and then dispatching brakeman to walking along the train car roofs and individually setting the brakes on each car.

That sounds like a pretty dangerous job.

The railroad industry has a very sordid history of killing its employees. All the way from track construction to actual operation.

Even in this 1955 fire training video you can see they care more about the locomotive than the safety of the crew: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkUQ3rTfU4s

tldw: crew were expected to enter the confined area of the engine room in the middle of a fire and turn at least two valves (that have complex interactions with each other) filling the same confined area with CO2.

Ironic since "van" means the front, as in vanguard.

I realize you weren't being serious, but this van is an abbreviation of caravan, which ultimately has its origins in Persian: In 16th cent. carouan, < Persian kārwān, in same sense. Found in medieval Latin carvana (Hoveden), caravanna, caravenna (Matt. Paris), and French carvane, from Crusading times, but apparently not in English before 16th cent. The form caravan was perhaps caravane from French.[1]

[1] http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/27717#eid10166797

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