Before the air brake, railroad engineers would stop trains by cutting power, braking their locomotives and using the whistle to signal their brakemen. The brakemen would turn the brakes in one car and jump to the next to set the brakes there, and then to the next, etc.

Yes, even the earliest trains had braking systems, though they were primitive compared to modern technology. In the mid-19th century, braking was often a manual and dangerous task; brakemen would physically climb across moving cars to turn hand wheels that pressed wooden or metal blocks against the wheels. This led to frequent accidents due to uncoordinated stopping power. A major breakthrough occurred in 1869 with George Westinghouse’s air brake, which used compressed air to apply brakes simultaneously across the entire train. Before this, some "old" trains relied on "steam brakes" on the locomotive alone, forcing the rest of the heavy carriages to slow down by mere friction and engine resistance. By the late 1800s, automatic vacuum or air brakes became a safety standard, finally allowing engineers to stop long, heavy trains reliably from the cockpit.