Thanks CFsteve, I'd kinda forgotten how crappy Lockdown is. The brain is quick to throw out things it doesn't like (well at least mine does).
I really just meant - do the locos slide badly when you're light engine and go into emergency braking?
Sorry for the slang. It's an expression I picked up from being trained on the South Eastern region. All the instructors there had learned on the first units to be fitted with EP (electro-pneumatic) brakes. Back in those days you had to keep the big clunky power handle pushed fully down all the time you were in gear. If you relaxed and let it up, it dumped the brake pipe and operated full emergency braking.
This made you adopt a hunched position, leaning over the desk and forcing weight onto your wrist all the time. It was a horrible arrangement and I would imagine that drivers who spent a career on them may have suffered from RSI in later life.
I'm sure you must have driven trains like that.
Although train spotters here call it a "Deadman's handle", I've never heard a UK mainline driver call it that - sounds like another piece of b/s that comes from the Land of Strangled English.
In any case if they must give it a histrionic name, it should be called the "Dead-Knackered Man's Handle", because that's really what it's for.
So, the expression came about because there were no Big Red Buttons in those days. If you wanted to stop the train, all you had to do was let go of (drop) the power handle.
I only ever drove one unit like that (during training), and I should imagine the passengers must have thought they had the Village Idiot up front as I came up in a heap quite a few times.
Certainly made me appreciate having a DSD pedal in more modern trains. I always told my trainees about that when they moaned about having aching calves from holding it down. "You kids don't know lucky you are, blahblahblah....."
Anyhow, that's a long answer to a short question.
Keep yer pecker up mate...... John.