WHAT AN ENGINE-DRIVER SAID.

Evening Post, Volume XLVII, Issue 88, 14 April 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHAT AN ENGINE-DRIVER SAID.

" So you want to know a bit about my life ?" said a grizzled old driver to one of Chums representatives. " Well, I've been at it now for over thirty-years — that is as cleaner, fireman, and driver — and so you may say I've had a fairish spell. Do I like the life ? Well, you see, a man gets used to his own trade, and likely enough he wouldn't care for any other that he might turn his hand to, especially at my time of life. But if a fellow wants a nice easy job, without responsibility, a job that he can go to sleep and dream over, I wouldn't advise him to have anything to do with this trade. A good mauy people imagine that an engine-driver has a nice easy time of it — just rushing along, every now and then pulling a handle here and there, and having a look at the signals ; but that's a great mistake. It isn't so much hard work that a driver has to do. His nerves are always on the strain. A mistake or bit of carelessness over his signals may cause a big smash, and you can easily imagine what it is like in a fog or a snowstorm, when you can't see a dozen yards in front of you. And in bad weather it's a comfortless job, I can tell you. Why, it was years and years before the companies would let us have any shelter on the engines — " cabs "as they call them — and do you know the reason? Simply because they got it into their heads that if drivers had a comfortable shelter to get behind they would not pay atteution to the signals. Of course that was all nonsense, because, even if we hadn't our sense of duty to keep us up to the mark, we have enough sense to know that the driver and fireman are always the first to suffer in a smash." '• Have you ever been in an accident?" "Well, not what you'd call a big one, but, of course, I've had several little affairs. Once I had an arm broken. It happened like this: — I was driving a slow passenger train une f"£gy night, -about as thick as pver 1 rt:ni(Mu^er. We were travelling some tif teen miles an hour. . and

I was leaning out of the right-hand side watching for the signals. Well, by some carelessness or other, a goods waggon had been left with its end sticking out from the siding on to the main line. Of course we hit it, and I was thrown off the engine by the shock right on to the line, and I broke my arm and a couple of ribs, too." — From Chums.