This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
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Fender is the commen term for a device protecting fallen pedestrians from being overrun by streetcars. The device is normaly only lowered to the ground when a sensor bracket hit an object laying in front of the wheels.--Pechristener1 (talk) 03:52, 29 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the web says Charles Babbage invented this thing in 1838.
But then there's the case of Isaac Dripps who assembled the John Bull locomotive imported into the USA in 1831, which entered service in 1833. The story is that it could be de-railed easily so he made some modifications including adding a truck at the front with a set of wheels, and a plow [2]. All accounts say these modifications were made soon after its introduction but no date is given, in this account [3] the photo of the modified loco has a caption 1833.
There is a poem [4] suggesting that the cowcatcher was patent #8996 in 1852 (who knows if that's just poetic license :-).
Then there is the story of Mr J. R. Davis of Brown Township, Franklin County, Ohio, USA, who supposably invented the thing in 1850 [5] - at least this story involves a bull (and maybe a cock as well).
How about [6] Lorenzo Davies of Columbus invented a device for the front of a railroad engine that he called a pilot (1851) but was soon dubbed as "cowcatcher"
So my question is, can anyone get hold of original sources to see exactly what Mr Babbage invented and whether he called it a cowcatcher and whether it looked anything like the traditional US cowcatcher.
How effective they may have been against cows, I know not, but sheep regularly got onto the line, which invariably meant the train would stop, and the crew would round them up and herd them off back through the fencing themselves! Regards, Lynbarn12:56, 13 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Another Smithsonian Institution article gives a date of "shortly after" 1833 for the John Bull modifications. [7] I'm guessing that attribution to a single person/place is not the way to go here, and that several people independently came up with this. I too would like a better citation for Babbage, frankly; there's no image of what he worked out and no indication that it was ever realized in practice (a common issue with Babbage's "innovations"). Mangoe17:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Babbage discusses his interest in railways in Passages from the Life of Philosopher. He describes two strategies for removing objects from the path of the train but fails to mention any practical application directlky arising from either. While he was asked to describe an invention for uncoupling train and engine in the event of an accident, I doubt that this would amount to his being employed by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway. [1]CastWider (talk) 13:54, 15 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
The German wikipedia cites some German railway regulation, dating from 1838 that requires all engines to have a pilot (unless they are used during daylight only). This makes it likely that pilots were common in Germany at that time and before.84.59.181.60 (talk) 11:05, 14 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It would have been a "cowcatcher"-type device. The 1838 Berlin to Potsdam Railway "application approval" mentioned above defines it as "a frame which extends down to the track in front of the locomotive's front wheels and is intended to clear away from the track any obstacle located thereon before the wheels reach it". The regulation calls it a Bahnräumer (i.e. a track clearer). -- Picapica (talk) 18:23, 24 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Pilot (locomotive) → Cowcatcher – Should this article be renamed to cowcatcher? I understand that pilot is the "official" name of the device, but "cowcatcher" is the layman's term, and the WP:COMMONNAME. It's hard to provide google stats though since pilot also gives results for aviation. Additionally, "cowcatcher" is a precise term, whereas pilot can mean a variety of things. Invinciblewalnut (talk) 00:54, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose The name of the article is already specific - Pilot (locomotive). 'Cowcatcher' seems to be a comparitively informal name. In most places, the word 'pilot' is used. Thank You. Kpddg(talk)04:35, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support Per WP:NATURAL, which says that even if a term is less common, as long as it's somewhat commonly used, it's preferred over a common but vague term that requires disambiguation. This is a clear application of that rule.ZXCVBNM (TALK)12:14, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
162 etc. It may be. As far as I can tell the article is written in British/Commonwealth English as it uses "snowplough" instead of the North American "snowplow." Does WP:ENGVAR supercede WP:NATURAL though? Tbh I didn't even know natural was a rule when I proposed this but I like the reasoning! Invinciblewalnut (talk) 21:36, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. The big, wedge-shaped cowcatchers were not generally used on British railways, but that's still what we'd call them if we saw them on a foreign locomotive. So no, not an ENGVAR issue. However, this article is not just about those. It's about any device used to deflect obstructions from the front of a locomotive, most of which would presumably not be called cowcatchers even in North America. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:16, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Cowcatchers are an example of one the types of pilot that this article talks about. Having said that, pilots are also only one of things this article talks about (pilots, lifeguards, anticlimbers and (sort of) snowploughs) so a rename might be in order but not to the proposed title. I don't know what a suitable inclusive term for these devices intended to divert objects that might derail a train out of the way would be though, so I'm not making a seperate proposal now. Thryduulf (talk) 08:17, 27 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'd sure like to see it changed but is is clearly written for the word pilot and would need to have some work done if it's changed. In the US nobody used the term pilot -- we use cowcatcher. There are almost no refs here and looking for "pilot" is not very successful at all. The structure of the two seems similar to me, it is only a difference in the name. Sectionworker (talk) 14:16, 29 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME Pilot (i.e. Locomotive Pilot) versus Cowcatcher (i.e. Locomotive Cowcatcher) is at least 3:1 more common in a google books search. Most industrial and scholarly railroad literature uses the term pilot, not Cowcatcher. Additionally, cowcatcher has an alternative meaning in the entertainment industry [[8]].
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Shouldn't this page at least mention whether we know where the term "cow catcher" came from, and whether cattle or sheep roaming across tracks was ever part of the description of the problem the device was designed to solve? 2603:8001:D3F0:87E0:0:0:0:1DF6 (talk) 18:44, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We don't publish information based on whether "we" know about it, but what reliable sources have to say. It seems thus far nobody with an interest in this article has come across sources that discussed this point. In other words, it would be inappropriate for us to say, "We don't know the origin of the term 'cowcatcher'.", but if someone came across a source that said, "The origins of the term 'cowcatcher' have been lost to antiquity", or such, we could use that. Cheers. DonIago (talk) 20:32, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
![[1]](http://www.cable-car-guy.com/images/safe_fig2.gif){kind=link}