Pilotman

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A railway employee who directs operations over a section of railway line temporarily reduced to single track, e.g. during maintenance work, or within an unsignalled area or over a line unfamiliar to the engine crew. UK

    "Driver G. A. Rowett, of the North Eastern Region's Neville Hill shed, now joined the locomotive as pilotman, and actually took over the regulator, Fireman Wheddon continuing to fire."

Example

More examples

"Driver G. A. Rowett, of the North Eastern Region's Neville Hill shed, now joined the locomotive as pilotman, and actually took over the regulator, Fireman Wheddon continuing to fire."

Etymology

From pilot + -man.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.