Slang on the tracks

Ten words railroaders invented that you still use to this day

Railroads changed America. They hauled manufactured goods, spare parts, mail, and millions of everyday folks across a country that used to take weeks to cross on foot or wagon. But railroading also built its own tight-knit culture, complete with its own slang. Take highball, the old signal for "all clear, full speed ahead," or caboose, that funny little car that used to trail every freight train. Both are still tossed around today, decades after steam gave way to diesel. Here are 10 more terms that show just how colorful railroad talk really was.

Around the late 1800s, American rail yards used a big wooden ball hoisted up a pole. When the ball was raised high, it meant the track ahead was clear, and the train could go full speed. Crews started saying "highball it," and the phrase stuck around long after those ball signals disappeared, replaced by colored lights.

Today, "highball" still means "go for it, full speed," even outside railroading.

This term goes back to 1800s American railroading. It described a worker riding a train without actually being on duty for that trip, just catching a ride to reach their next assignment. The term later jumped the rails entirely, showing up in airline talk ("deadhead flights") and everyday business slang for anything moved without generating revenue, like an empty return trip.

Nobody's totally sure where this one came from, but many word-history experts trace it back to a Dutch sailing term, "kombuis," meaning a ship's kitchen. Somehow, that crossed over into American railroading in the 1800s to describe the little car at the back of a freight train where the crew ate, slept, and kept watch.

Cabooses mostly vanished by the 1980s thanks to new tracking tech, but the word lives on in memory.

First recorded around 1918, this nickname described the crews who laid and maintained track by hand, before machines took over. Nobody agrees on where "gandy" came from—a popular but unproven story blames a Chicago tool company—but the "dancer" part makes sense: workers moved in rhythmic, coordinated steps, often guided by a caller singing out the beat, much like old work songs.

Old-time locomotives, especially the big freight-hauling kind, got nicknamed "hogs" by rail crews sometime in the 1800s. Naturally, the men who drove them became "hoggers," or sometimes "hogheads." It's a good-natured, slightly teasing nickname, the kind railroaders loved tossing at each other.

You'll still hear "hogger" used by old-timers and rail buffs today when talking about engineers.

This one didn't actually start on the railroad. It came from the 19th-century British military, where high-ranking officers wore caps trimmed in gold braid, or "brass." The nickname spread to American business and railroading by the early 1900s, where it became a common, half-joking way to refer to the company president or top bosses, the folks calling the shots from a comfortable office.

This newer term describes a railfan so excited about trains that they practically "foam at the mouth," snapping photos and chasing locomotives with total enthusiasm. Nobody agrees exactly how it started; some blame the foam scenery hobbyists use for model railroads, others say it's just about that over-the-top excitement.

First showing up in American newspapers around 1903 to 1905, a "shoofly" is a temporary track built to route trains around a blocked section, like a landslide or construction site. The name likely just comes from "shoo" plus "fly": basically waving traffic out of the way.

It's sometimes mixed up with the old molasses shoofly pie or a Civil War-era song of the same name, but there's no real evidence those are connected.

Despite the funny name, a frog has nothing to do with amphibians directly; it's the X-shaped metal piece at a track junction that lets train wheels cross from one rail to another. Railroaders started using the term in the 1800s, likely because the casting's shape reminded someone of a frog's splayed legs.

Railroaders took the everyday verb "to consist of" and flipped it into a noun sometime in the 1900s. A train's "consist" is simply its lineup: how many locomotives, freight cars, or passenger cars are hooked together, and in what order. It's a small grammatical trick, but it's stuck around as standard railroad shorthand ever since.

Did you know any of these?

Lima 9 Quebec! Discover NATO phonetics and their purpose

While most people have never heard of the NATO phonetic alphabet, they have likely encountered it in use, at least in movies and television. If you can recall a scene where a pilot says something like "Alpha," "Bravo," and "Charlie" over the radio, then you have heard the NATO phonetic alphabet at work. It is a system designed to ensure letters are clearly understood, even over crackly or noisy connections. It's been around since the 1950s, but its roots go back even further. Take a look at some interesting and cool facts about it!

Simply put, a spelling alphabet helps clarify letters and numbers in messages, since many of them sound alike—like B and P, or M and N.

This is especially useful when static or interference affects radio or phone communication. For example, "DH98" would be said as "Delta-Hotel-Niner-Ait" to avoid confusion.

The following is the complete current NATO phonetic alphabet: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, and Zulu.

Each word starts with the letter that it represents, and the words were selected to be easily understood by speakers of many different languages.

The original International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) alphabet, the predecessor to the NATO phonetic alphabet, was officially adopted on November 1, 1951, and became effective for civil aviation on April 1, 1952.

However, issues soon arose. Words like Delta and Extra, or Nectar and Victor, sometimes caused confusion, especially in poor radio conditions.

To be included in the NATO phonetic alphabet, a word had to be a "live," or commonly used, word in English, French, and Spanish—the three working languages of the ICAO, which developed the system before NATO adopted it.

This rule helped ensure that the words were easily recognized and understood across different cultures and languages, improving international communication and reducing confusion.

The ICAO required each word to be easy to pronounce and recognize by speakers of many different languages.

This helped ensure clear communication between pilots and air traffic controllers worldwide, reducing the risk of misunderstandings.

Another criterion for inclusion in the NATO phonetic alphabet was that a word had to be clearly transmissible over the radio and easy to understand.

This helped minimize confusion caused by static, poor signals, or accents, making communication in aviation safer and more reliable.

Each word in the NATO phonetic alphabet had to begin with the letter it represented and be easily recognizable across several major languages, including English, French, and Spanish.

This made the alphabet easier to learn and understand internationally, ensuring consistency and clarity in communication.

Words in the NATO phonetic alphabet had to be free of any offensive or inappropriate meanings in any of the major languages.

This helped ensure that the words could be used safely and respectfully across different cultures and regions without causing misunderstandings or offense.

NATO changed the spelling of "X-ray" to "Xray" early on to make sure it was pronounced as a single word.

The ease of pronunciation goes hand in hand with another crucial aspect: there can be no other meaning interpretations.

Two words in the NATO phonetic alphabet use non-standard English spellings: "Alfa" and "Juliett."

"Alfa" avoids the "ph" to ensure correct pronunciation by non-English speakers. "Juliett" includes a second "t" so French speakers don't mistakenly drop the final sound.