A single, short shriek of the whistle pierces the air. Even from your position at the end of the train, the sound echoes into the hills and rings in your ears — it’s a call to action. “Take this with you, greenhorn, You’ll need it.” The conductor stoops down behind the car’s blazing cast iron stove and hands you a length of hickory wood about as long as an axe handle. Your job is to clamber over each successive railroad car and apply the brakes. Every half-turn of a cast iron wheel, connected by a long stem to the mechanism below, further applies the brake shoes.
The wooden brake club now in your grip is for added leverage on the especially obstinate brake wheels, which happens to be all of them. You’re a railroad brakeman after all, somewhere on the spectrum between man and machine. Air brakes are a novelty at this time in history, and stopping a speeding train requires several sets of human hands. The cutting wind feels frigid even on the mildest of days as you walk atop a boxcar. Your denim jacket is buttoned as tight as the fit of your quilted wool cap to keep the cold away. As you bend down to turn the final brake wheel, the sensation of a rubber ball slamming into the back of your shoulders nearly knocks your cap off! The tell-tales! Ropes with knots dangle above the tracks to warn brakemen that a tunnel is approaching. Ducking down to avoid the stone portal, you become enveloped by black exhaust smoke as the train passes through a mountain. Your indigo cotton coverings turn to the color of graphite as cinders are brushed away.
Rail travel was a rugged adventure in its infancy and coming of age. Like all great technological revolutions, it held the public’s interest and made many heroes and villains alike. As industry and advertising changed the American landscape, railroading’s impact on modern workwear was nothing short of immense. The dirty rigors of the job, which were drastically different from the agricultural origins that many people were familiar with, created a mode of dress all its own. While many of the fabrics and garments existed before the transportation boom of the late 19th century, railroad workers popularized certain fashions among the general public (where their association with the former became indelible). Work-suits of blue denim bib overalls, Wabash stripe chore coats, and cloth “engineer” caps had reached the pinnacle of popular imagery by the early 1900s.
An Instrument of War and Peace
Railroads not only changed fashion, but they changed the physical American landscape forever. Some historians define the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 as the 19th-century equivalent of the moon landing. This massive undertaking came roughly forty years after the first commercially viable railroads sprang up. Inspiration had been imported from the United Kingdom where steam locomotion was rapidly replacing horse-drawn trams. On both continents, the early days were marked by danger and massive financial risk. Workers brought the dreams of these tycoons to life. Many of these laborers came from across the globe and sought economic and social mobility. It was thus in North America, where vast natural resources remained unexplored, that “robber barons” ran free and financed a veritable iron blanket woven from rails.
The single greatest expansion of early railroads wasn’t purely economic but spurred by deadly warfare. The American Civil War (1861-1865) underscored the importance of industry and logistics on the modern battlefield. The Union faction, made predominantly of states in the northern U.S., sought to capitalize on an early lead in equipment and track construction. At the war’s start, they controlled 70% of the existing rail network. A “railroad war” took shape. Armored trains and daring raids behind enemy lines foreshadowed tactics to come in the next century as transportation won the Union a bloody victory. The American Civil War even gave rise to the first train robbers; hardened veterans of the conflict who would later become folk heroes and villains simultaneously.
Despite the bloodletting occurring in the pastoral hills outside of the nation’s capital, The Pacific Railway Act of 1862 was signed and set the stage for a postwar boom. This act had its roots in a prewar proposal, which became a political crux even before Union and Confederate forces took the battlefield. War veterans, African Americans, and newly arrived immigrants would bring the Transcontinental Railroad to fruition after years of planning and construction. Like a surgical suture, the route closed the open wound left by civil war. However, a new period of conflict was just beginning. Labor, outlaws, Native Americans, and even rival railroad enterprises would come to clash over this burgeoning industry and capture the popular imagination for years to come. In the cases of competing companies, it sometimes devolved into instances of corporate armed conflict. As the construction boom continued in the U.S., the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885 to span the wilderness and compel western settlement. Fortunes were made-and-lost in endless repetition, but the spirit of this wild era endured into the 20th century.
“Be On Time, Or We’re Leaving the Rails”
Railroad technology benefited from innovation in other industrial fields and vice-versa. Expansion emphasized mass production, especially when it came to equipping a growing workforce. Steel and petroleum were emerging markets that were now accessible thanks to the ability to move vast quantities of these products — both the raw materials required and the finished goods. Greater demand was made for heavier trains and the need for upgraded tracks. A better track meant that higher speeds could be reached. The need for speed and an insatiable appetite for freight was then designed into larger locomotives and rolling stock (i.e. “railcars” or “wagons”), many of which were purpose-built based on their owners’ specific needs.
Despite all of these advancements, the danger remained for workers and passengers. Safety appliances such as air brakes and automatic couplers wouldn’t become required by American law until 1900. Even after safety became a public concern, some railroaders were martyred for their blue-collar heroics while trying to adhere to the strict timetables imposed by their companies. Mail and passenger trains were always given top priority for scheduling while running late was a fireable offense. One such folk hero, locomotive engineer “Casey” Jones, became immortalized in song after giving his life to prevent a deadly collision between his passenger train and a stalled freight. He was the only one to die in the thunderous crash. The song bearing his name has been recorded by numerous artists and continues to be a bluegrass and folk music staple. Meanwhile, “The Wreck of Old ’97” features engineer “Steve” Broady. This hit ballad, based on a 1903 accident, is a graphic account of the number 97 mail train, which lost control of its brakes and careened from a trestle at high speed. Emerging at the dawn of the recording and motion picture industries, this subgenre kept the drama of railroading fresh in the American imagination.
The Increasing Need for Workwear
It stands to reason then, that with demanding work, the clothing worn by railroaders would also be purpose-built. While specific jobs on the railroad required different dress, “trainmen” (the train crews), “shopmen” (craftsmen and mechanics), and the “section gangs” (track workers) were in the thick of the smoke, soot, and soil. Workwear uniforms evolved with different companies ordering entire ensembles of matching fabrics and prints. By 1900, this level of uniformity for trainmen became common practice. For a detailed example of this, see “Wabash Stripe” section below.
However, one common exception to trainmen was the passenger train conductor. They had an air of authority with the public and wore a wool suit with a badge which was superseded by formal uniforms later in the 19th century. There were also other positions where daily dress varied based on seniority and company policy.
1830 to 1870
Prior to the American Civil War, work clothing came from a variety of sources. Cottage industries produced small batches of garments meant for local consumption. With railroading in its infancy, though quickly learning to crawl, its agents dressed as other blue-collar workers did in their time.
However, overalls were not symbolic of the industry yet. Low-rise overalls (pictured below) — a pattern that starkly contrasts today’s bib overalls — were evidently a popular choice to protect against grease and grime in a variety of trades. The cloth was inexpensive and typically bleached or left undyed. Union engineer troops, many of whom were engaged in railroad construction and repair during The Civil War, were prescribed overalls of, “…white or dark colored cotton or linen canvass[sic.]…” to be used while performing manual labor. As 1870 drew nearer, the length of overall bibs generally increased and the wearer’s shirt was more protected.
Corduroy cloth swathed the droves of Irish immigrants that flocked to America during the mid-19th century. This stout cotton weave had already been a staple for centuries. It was especially indicative of the working class in the United Kingdom, and its commonality among Irish farmers and railway workers was established before they even left Europe. Once on American shores, there was a modest market for corduroys.
Canvas and denim, which were more conducive to mass production, would soon jointly rule over America. However, the material lives on in song as this Fenian shanty recounts,
“In eighteen-hundred-and-forty-one,
I put my corduroy breeches on,
I put my corduroy breeches on,
To work upon the railway…“
Like the stories of brave locomotive engineers, “Pat Works on the Railway/Railroad” has left an indelible mark on the American repertoire.
Akin to corduroy in the U.K., red wool undershirts and overshirts represented the spirit of labor in American art during the period but with a sort of romantic twist. The intrepid miners who flocked to the California gold fields in the early 1850s purchased some bodacious specimens from opportunistic vendors. These garments were thus an early stylistic fad for commercial workwear. Overshirts–with button plackets, patch pockets, and ornate trim–would help inspire the short work jackets of the following decades (along with the adolescent “roundabout” jacket). Like their full-button counterparts, this outerwear protected the underclothing from soiling but was worn like most shirts of the day; tucked into the trousers. In colder weather, a coat or overcoat could be worn on top. While homespun examples exist, mass-produced versions of various colors and fabrics can be seen during the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the 1860s.
1870 to 1890
The era after the American Civil War was marked by industrialized workwear in a form recognizable to modern fashion. Short jackets or “blouses” entered the wardrobe after moving from farm to mining camp.
Other laborers, including those working on railways, adopted this style because it allowed freedom of motion while keeping their clothes clean. The story of Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss is well known, but one overlooked impact that they had on fashion was consistency. Their product tapped a growing market of industrial and railroad workers who valued it for the same reasons as their mining counterparts in California and Nevada; they were readily available. With this, the pleated short jacket and matching, riveted “waist overalls“ (read: jeans) became a mainstay for decades after 1873.
Early commercial work jackets came in select fabrics with denim and canvas often appearing, though stripes and checks also exist in historical photos. Many vendors tried to enter the patented-workwear boom with a plethora of reinforcements. Patent and copyright infringements were rampant in the 19th century, and copycats also abounded.
Thanks to commercialization, a railroader in San Francisco could now share the same look as one working in Omaha as trains took Strauss’ inventions to far-flung stores.
Mechanic’s Caps
Headwear also began to take a different shape. With fur felt hats, variations of the domed “bowler” or “derby” grew overwhelmingly popular even in the wild, cowboy hat-sporting West. In addition, wide-brimmed hats weren’t always practical indoors and in locomotive railway cabs. Instead, an old staple had to be revised. Cloth caps of various descriptions, sometimes called “mechanic’s caps” or “wheel caps” by modern scholars, were popular even before the American Civil War.
Their provenance among the mechanically inclined grew during the latter 19th century. New variations saw stout cylindrical crowns with brims that could be sharply angled. When they were adopted by the railroads as part of standardized uniforms, these caps took on legendary status as railroad memorabilia. The phrase “engineer’s hat” is often used to describe them, especially when made from blue-and-white striped fabrics.
1890 to 1910
The turn of the century was defined by novelty. Novel ideas, novel technology, and even novel fashion. The World’s Columbia Exposition of 1893, held in Chicago, was a tour-de-force of modernity and railroads were at the forefront. A decade later, Stormy Kromer was no exception to this, with headwear built on the legacy of railroad caps… with inspiration from baseball.
The distinct character of an emerging sport would impress an idea upon a locomotive engineer and semi-pro baseballer named George “Stormy” Kromer. As the story goes, he had his wife sew an earband onto a standard baseball cap. This kept the fit snug and his ears warm, both of which are important on a speeding rail locomotive during the Winter. The enterprise was formed in 1903 and Stormy Kromer is still supplying wool caps to this day.
Engineer/Chore Coat
The versatile engineer’s or chore coat was inspired by the cut of men’s suit coats of the day. It was the marriage of the practical short work jacket and contemporary everyday fashion. The length of these coats, along with some examples having notched collars, share strong similarities to their wool counterparts.
The use of denim and canvas made it a protective piece of outerwear that wouldn’t encumber its wearer. Evidence of the interplay between everyday fashion and workwear also has military roots dating to The American Civil War. The inexpensive, simple, and once-civilian “sack coat” (pictured above) became the standard military coat for the Union Army, which also bolstered its commercial popularity. Workwear makers were then keen to put a railroad spin on it. An unlined version, made from denim or another weave of cotton, was perfect for ensuring uniformity among train crews while staying practical for their job environment. In fact, chore coats in period advertising are sometimes just called “sack coats.” As a traditional symbol of the railroad, they’re appropriately labeled “engineer’s coats” by modern makers.
Overalls were also subjected to the rigors of industrialization through endless tinkering and catalog marketing. Sophisticated graphic design helped immortalize some of the most sought-after defunct brands of today; Boss of the Road, Finck’s, and Stronghold just to name a select few of that particular generation.
It was this iconic advertising that helped resurrect some brands. However, the term “overalls” in period print can sometimes be ambiguous, as the term was applied to a wide range of garments including the classic bib or “apron” overalls as well as modern “jeans.” The term “coveralls” can likewise be confounding. In the first decade of the 20th century, “boiler suits” or “combination suits” were appearing in British trade journals. It constituted a work jacket sewn to trousers in its simplest form–a bit of ingenuity that would inspire the concept of modern coveralls in the 1910s.
So, it’s a little easier to see why makers were excited to use illustrations and photos for their products. A picture is worth a thousand (synonymic) words. There would be no question as to what they were mailing you!
Wabash Stripe: A Branding Icon is Born
Wabash Stripe overalls, boiler suits, engineer’s coats, and shirts have become the quintessential pieces for modern makers and collectors. The name most closely associated with the off-white-dots-on-indigo-cotton is J. L. Stifel & Sons, identified by their trademark boot logo. Ironically, Stifel didn’t make garments. The German immigrant and his family churned out quality fabrics on an industrial scale, especially cotton calicos. Workwear makers took note and Stifel’s reputation grew throughout the ready-made market.
As for the “Wabash Stripe”? The Wabash Railroad was a juggernaut of the Midwest U.S. that existed from 1837 until 1964, with a connecting line to the Canadian province of Ontario. Meanwhile, the company of Hamilton Carhartt, today known only by its founder’s surname, was established in 1889 and was flourishing by the early 1900s. A surviving fabric sampler from the first decade of the 20th century has a swatch of Stifel fabric, sampled from uniforms made by Carhartt, for the Wabash Railroad. Stripes of small white hearts imposed on indigo blue initiated a legend among workwear connoisseurs. The association between the stippled cotton print and the railroad became inseparable.
Coincidentally, train nerds will remember that the railroad’s slogan, “Heart of America,” also appeared in ads with hearts illustrated therein. However, the Stifel pattern consisting of miniature hearts was probably the product of some wild phonetics used in advertising; “Car-In-Heart” and opposed to Carhartt. This early campaign propelled the brand. Hearts can even be seen in the shape of the buttons on some of the coats that they produced! Whatever the exact reason for designing small hearts into the pattern, the unique printed fabric has been reincarnated through many variations in the last 120 years–definitely in the form of dots.
Modern Makers
Freewheelers
The Freewheelers “Wigwag” Indigo Wabash Work Jacket is an ode to one of the finest pieces of outerwear ever produced in blue-and-white; the engineer’s coat. Fit-wise, it’s more contemporary with a slimmer silhouette. The use of the aforementioned historic is a bit cheeky considering it’s a modernized pattern and not strictly a reproduction. However, there is no denying that research was done to bring the subtle details to life, such as the chest pocket stitching that harkens back to 1900.
Available for $332 from Corlection.
LaRose Hat Co.
Chris LaRose of LaRose Hat Co. is a one-man powerhouse for resurrecting turn-of-the-century workwear. The attention to detail and research that he invests into his line of engineer hats has even attracted the business of multiple historic, operating railroads! Recent projects have expanded into chore coats and sack coats with likewise meticulous detail. Chris’ focus is individualized custom orders as each cap is sewn one at a time, though for corporate clients he has produced small batches. Several engineer hat variations are listed on his website and it’s up to the buyer to select the fabric and thread such as this exemplary Wabash example.
Available to order on a custom basis from LaRose Hat Co.
Levi’s
Overalls for the era discussed in this article are exceedingly difficult to find, but the LVC Lot 66 Bib Overall provides a tantalizing taste of an early 20th-century pattern, with the narrow “scale pocket” being one of its most definitive features. Something to be said about LVC is that they have a clothing archive from which patterns and manufacturing insights can be gleaned for maintaining the fidelity of their premium production runs. In the author’s experience, quality and detail are decent with their historical pieces. Levi’s “been there, done that” with denim, overalls, and many other pieces of workwear.
Available for $350 from Seams Boutique.
The Rite Stuff
The Bulldog Wabash Work Shirt was inspired by a 1920s postcard, but would not be out of place even 20 years prior; the chinstrap idea has roots in that previous pivotal era. The front placket pull-over style and single chest pocket are also hallmarks of a time before full-button workshirts reigned. Wabash cotton fabric of 5.7 ounces makes a handsome shirting-weight weave.
Available for $251 from Redcast Heritage
Two Cats Brand (TCB)
Minus the 1918-patented removable buttons, the TCB Cathcartt Chore Coat is a strong contender for workwear inspired by early Carhartt. This denim staple will compliment your stripes whether they’re Wabash or hickory. As with the Freewheelers coat, the use of original branding on a modern garment could be seen as heavy-handed (though the name was slightly changed). However, it should be noted that TCB draws on ideas from a wide range of decades — from the late 19th century through the postwar years — and the brand is known for its playful branding.
Available for $242 from Redcast Heritage.
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