I spotted this homemade battery charger for passenger car when I was out waiting for Train 901. If you have any pictures of train support equipments, please share them.
Here is a 'Car Walker' made by The Advance Co, called a "One Man" rail car mover, model #288. Only the "head" is shown. A 6 to 7 foot long Oak Pole was jammed into the socket on the right hand side that is not shown here. When we used this to move a rail car, we would position the 'point' (on the left), under a wheel with the flat 'shoe' (at the bottom) resting on the top of a rail head. As we lowered the long handle, the head would slip up farther under the wheel tightly. To move the car, we could pull up on the handle slowly at first, and the small knob shown above the flat shoe would push against the tread of the wheel causing it to start rolling away from us. All we had to do then was keep a gentle 'pull up' bump ever so often to keep the car going and walk along side until we got to where we wanted to take the car. Now stopping this car's momentum required that we, or someone riding, would have to crank the brake wheel up tight in time to stop at the right place, usually a loading dock. (I did this one time alone, but had to do some fast climbing to get up to the brake wheel in time!) This device was used mostly to place cars in correct alignment at a loading dock doorway, or to move a car away and bring another forward. It was surprisingly easy to roll a loaded box car with one of these! Occasionally, we would have to turn it over and push with the flat shoe against the wheel on a heavily loaded car to get it started. It is a slightly greater leverage that way, but tricky to control.
