In Railroading, Tying Up Means Clocking Out for the Day

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, my name is Zach Messenbrink. I am from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Zach. What’s up?

How are you? I work for the railroad here in Omaha, and we have a lot of terminology.

And one thing that has always got me is the idea of tying up. We do not clock off or log off or clock out as railroad employees. We tie up, and it is something that I haven’t been able to trace back very easily. So I figured I’d give you a call, so I’m gonna tie up. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. What time did you guys tie up yesterday? Yeah, go ahead and pull that train out and get it parked and tie it up. All right, we can help a little with this. I think that the best old-time glossary that I know of railroad language is Freeman Hubbard’s 1945 work, and he defines tie-up as stop for a meal or a rest.

So right away, we can see that there’s a little bit of change has happened there in the 50-some-odd years since then.

Well, I guess more than 50, but 70 years.

One other interesting thing I’ve seen here leads me to believe, and this is through all the different uses I’ve seen in the railroad journals because there’s so many of them, is that it looks like it’s not just about people, but it could be about your rolling stock, your cars and your engines and so forth.

So it’s about putting a rolling stock out of service or on a siding or off the main line, either for a moment or overnight.

Yeah, so it could be your rolling stock or your personnel.

At least historically, that’s what it was about.

And then even saw somebody use it to mean that they retired from a career of the railroads. I’ve tied up after 30 years in the business is how they phrased it.

Oh, yeah.

I have not heard that one.

Yeah.

But I can find it as far back as the 1880s.

And this quote from the Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Journal, if that doesn’t give you tingles, I don’t know what will.

Yeah, I’m sure there are people out there that are getting all kinds of tingling.

It goes like this. Mother Nature gave the road an idea of what to expect every winter when a snowstorm, followed by rain and sleet, covered the ground with a glassy coating of foot thick. The next day, the road was tied up tight for one engine was disabled, and without help, the other couldn’t even reach the main line.

And by road in there, they mean railroad.

And I wonder, do they still use that, Zach? Road, just a short way to say railroad?

Yep.

My insurance company is the Iron Road Insurance.

Oh, there we go. Exactly right. Yeah. And probably this tie up sense comes from ships because we have a long history of a language from ships being borrowed into railroad language, especially in the early days.

A lot of the metaphors are the same. A lot of the roles were the same in the early days.

So I would not be surprised that tying up a ship at a port or a pier isn’t exactly the language that was borrowed into railroading.

I can definitely see that.

We have transportation in common.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

And didn’t there used to be pilots? Railroad people were called pilots at one point?

Yeah.

As a matter of fact, still to this day, the people that move the engines around to put them on trains will be called hostlers. And the guy that’s connected to the hostler to line switches and move him around will be called the hostler pilot.

There we go.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Hostler like horse then? Somebody who handles a horse?

Exactly.

Yep.

But, yep, the hostler and the pilot.

We still call them the pilots.

Well, Zach, thank you for sharing this language.

I know there’s a whole much more railroad talk that we’d love to hear at another time.

So think about it and give us another call, all right?

Absolutely.

I’ll be in touch with you.

I appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Take care and be safe.

Yep.

Yep.

You guys have a good day.

Bye, Zach.

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