jerk water

present singular third person jerks water · participle present jerking water · participle past jerked water · past jerked water

1. USapocryphalrail transportTo fill a steam locomotive water tank manually from natural water supplies (a hypothetical process whose use has been discredited).

   The Santa Fe, called the Jerk Water route because they "jerked" water from ponds and wallows for the engine, still frayed out at the Kansas line.

   1954, Mari Sandoz, The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men, page 171

   1 more example

   […] by bailing from near streams with buckets, (the brake-man called this operation jerking water) and from this the road gets its name of jerkwater road.

   1975 Mar, Indiana Historical Society, Indiana Magazine of History, volume 71, number 1, page 355

2. USdatedrail transportTo scoop water from a track pan mounted on the tracks directly into a steam engine's tank without stopping.

   The early, crude "jerk water" device applied by the New York Central is shown in figure 8.24.

   2001, Anthony J. Bianculli, Trains and Technology: Track and structures, page 19610

   2 more examples

   In 1870 at Montrose, N.Y., the New York Central made the first installation of a track pan and scoop to permit locomotives to take water on the fly. Since these installations invariably were in tiny communities, and since they permitted locomotives literally to “jerk water”

   1979, The Train Dispatcher - Volumes 61-62, page 49

   Towns with track pans no longer had as many trains stop there, and they became derisively known as “jerkwater” towns, where the trains would jerk water and just keep on going.

   2016, Kevin EuDaly, Mike Schafer, Steve Jessup, The Complete Book of North American Railroading, page 335

comparative more jerk water · superlative most jerk water

1. UScolloquialderogatoryOf inhabited places, small, insignificant, isolated, backwards

   c. 1920, Ring Lardner, The Real Dope But any way from the number of jerk water burgs we went through you would think we was on the Monon and the towns all looks so much like the other that […].