c. 1920, Ring Lardner, The Real Dope
But any way from the number of jerk water burgs we went through you would think we was on the Monon and the towns all looks so much like the other that […].

The Santa Fe, called the Jerk Water route because they "jerked" water from ponds and wallows for the engine, still frayed out at the Kansas line.

[…] by bailing from near streams with buckets, (the brake-man called this operation jerking water) and from this the road gets its name of jerkwater road.

In 1870 at Montrose, N.Y., the New York Central made the first installation of a track pan and scoop to permit locomotives to take water on the fly. Since these installations invariably were in tiny communities, and since they permitted locomotives literally to “jerk water”

The early, crude "jerk water" device applied by the New York Central is shown in figure 8.24.

Towns with track pans no longer had as many trains stop there, and they became derisively known as “jerkwater” towns, where the trains would jerk water and just keep on going.

Jerk water

Meaning

Verb

Adj