Definition
A turnout is a short section of secondary track on a railroad — a siding or side-track — that allows one train to pull off the main line while another passes. The term describes both the physical infrastructure (the branching track itself, including the moveable switch rails that divert a train from the main track) and, by extension, the location where that diversion occurs.
In the labor context, turnout carries a distinct historical legal meaning: a concerted work stoppage or strike, particularly one aimed at compelling an employer to increase wages. A turnout in this sense was the collective act of workers quitting employment together, as well as the individual striker who participated in it.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The number or proportion of people who attend or participate in an event, especially an election; also, a place to pull off a road; a railroad switch or siding.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A short side-track on a railroad; also, a strike or quitting of employment by workers to compel higher wages.
The common meanings of turnout are unusually close to its legal meanings, but the relationship is not identical. The election-participation sense — now the dominant everyday meaning — has essentially no legal-technical content and should not be imported into interpretation of legal documents using the term. The railroad and labor senses in ordinary historical usage track legal usage closely, but the labor meaning has largely disappeared from both ordinary and legal speech, making it a research trap in historical materials.
Common Confusion
Turnout (railroad) vs. switch: In modern railroad engineering, a switch or points refers to the moveable rail mechanism that diverts a train; a turnout encompasses the full assembly, including the switch, the connecting track, and the side-track itself. Older legal sources use turnout more broadly than modern technical usage uses switch, and conflating them can obscure whether a case concerns the switching mechanism specifically or the siding installation generally.
Turnout (labor) vs. strike: These terms are functional synonyms in historical labor law, but turnout is the earlier usage. Strike becomes dominant in legal writing from roughly the 1870s onward. A researcher who treats them as belonging to different legal concepts will misread the historical record.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter turnout in two entirely separate legal contexts, and confusing them produces significant research errors.
Railroad law context: Railroad cases from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries frequently turn on the physical condition, placement, or maintenance of turnouts. Liability questions — whether a railroad owed a duty to maintain a turnout in safe condition, whether a defective switch constituted negligence, or whether a collision resulted from failure to divert onto a siding — all hinge on understanding turnout as a piece of track infrastructure. When reading older railroad cases, do not assume turnout means merely a track switch or switch mechanism in the modern sense; the term often encompasses the full side-track installation, including its length and capacity to clear the main line.
Labor law context: The labor meaning of turnout predates the modern vocabulary of strikes and collective action. In early American and English labor cases, workers were prosecuted under conspiracy doctrines for organizing turnouts. The word appears in grand jury indictments, criminal statutes, and equity proceedings well before the term strike became dominant usage. Researchers working in pre-Civil War labor history or early criminal conspiracy doctrine must recognize turnout as a synonym for what later sources call a strike — the two terms describe the same act, but turnout falls out of use in legal writing by the late nineteenth century. A corpus search for labor unrest that relies only on strike will miss earlier primary materials.
Jurisdictional overlap: Both meanings appear in Pennsylvania sources with particular frequency, reflecting that state's early importance in both railroad development and industrial labor disputes.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's defines turnout exclusively in the railroad sense: a short side-track allowing one train to pass while another occupies the main track, with a citation to Pennsylvania authority. Anderson's dispatches the term with a bare cross-reference to RAILROAD, suggesting the railroad meaning was the dominant legal sense by the time that dictionary was compiled.
Neither Bouvier's nor Anderson's captures the labor meaning, which is a significant gap. The labor sense of turnout was well established in American legal proceedings by the mid-nineteenth century — grand jury charges and conspiracy indictments in early industrial cases used the term regularly — but the major historical legal dictionaries treat it as beneath notice, perhaps because by the time those dictionaries were compiled the word had already largely yielded to strike in legal usage. Researchers relying solely on these dictionaries will find no guidance on the labor meaning at all.
Wiktionary preserves both senses and additionally notes a general meaning (the number of people attending or participating in an event) that has no significant legal application, though it occasionally appears in election law commentary in a descriptive rather than technical capacity.
Jurisdictional Note
The railroad meaning of turnout appears across American jurisdictions wherever railroad litigation was active, with Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Midwestern states producing the densest body of case law. The labor meaning, while used nationally, appears most prominently in early New England and Mid-Atlantic industrial cases, reflecting the geographic concentration of early American manufacturing.