(Dean, Department Chair of Railroad Operations Technology and instructor of railroad history at Western Iowa Tech Community College in Sioux City, Iowa)

Everyone has seen trains. And most people have seen trains being pulled apart or put together in a freight yard. The job seems easy and quick enough. That's because of the modern automatic coupler. But it was not always that way. Did you know it was an Iowa farmer who brought into use the modern coupler on railroad cars? Here's your Inside Track...

Lorenzo Coffin was a civil war veteran and farmed near Fort Dodge. Even though he had a minimal acquaintance with railroad technology, he would usher in a revolution for thousands of brakemen.

It all started one day when Coffin was traveling by train. For whatever reason, there was a delay, and Coffin spent the time watching a brakeman hitch and unhitch cars on a nearby track. Coffin saw the brakeman injure his hand in the process. He had heard of the frequency of such accidents happening, but this was the first time he saw it with his own eyes.

The hitching and unhitching process was fraught with peril. There was a large link between the two cars held in place with a pin. When cars were joined together, the brakeman had to guide the link with his hands into the housing as the engineer backed the car into position. When the exact spot was reached, the brakeman set a pin through the housing and into the link.

Brakemen would lose fingers, hands, and feet in the hitching procedure. In fact, veteran brakemen rarely had any fingers left, and many were killed due to slipping on the tracks or being crushed between the two cars. It was so bad that no company would issue life insurance to brakeman.

Coffin was moved by the accident he witnessed. He then spent years finding a better way. He had heard that Eli Janney had invented an automatic coupler. Cars could be joined together and set apart without the brakeman standing between them. The railroads, however, were unwilling to spend the money to adopt the new, safer device.

Our Iowa farmer then began his crusade. He became Iowa's first railroad commissioner and lobbied Congress to pass laws requiring railroads to use Janney's coupler. His efforts were successful, and in 1893 Congress passed the Railroad Safety Appliance Act. All rail cars now had to use the automatic coupler.

Lorenzo Coffin, the Iowa farmer from Fort Dodge, saved thousands of hands, fingers, and lives of railroad workers for more than a century. At the same time, his efforts saved the railroad companies billions of dollars by reducing the coupling action to a fraction of the time needed with the old link-and-pin method.

We join the railroad industry today in saluting Lorenzo Coffin, the Iowa farmer whose compassion caused a revolution in the transportation industry.