An Engine Driver on the Job

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22030, 9 February 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

An Engine Driver on the Job

Sitting in one of the rear carriages ©f a railway train can be a romantio adventure to the imaginative traveller —especially at night. When the lights have been lowered and the rhythmic beat of the wheels induces a drowsy mood, it is pleasant to press one's face against the cool glass of the window and watch the fleeting forms that loom up mysteriously in the outer darkness. Now it is the funereal plumes of trees marching darkly against the stars —now the sombre masses of hills—or a remote pin-point of light winking from some lonely farmstead. Presently as the track winde about a bluff the whole curving length of the train comes into view like a jewelled serpent and at its head a sharp pencil of light stabs the gloom from the engine's headlight, while the open firebox door lights up the tolling clouds of steam with a lurid glare. Let us suppose for a moment that it is possible for you to leave your comfortable seat and, walking through the train, step into the cab of the locomotive which is, at the moment, toiling up a heavy gradient with four times its own weight behind the tender. Foi a few minutes you are utterly bewildered —you have stepped into another world entirely—a world shuddering with the thunderous blast of the exhaust and rolling from side to side with the thrust of the great pistons. A dim eloctric bulb Rhine* on the quivering needles of pressure gauges which stand out whitef&oed among an array of brass fittings, and at regular intervals a searing heat leaps from the furnace-door as the toiling fireman swings it back to feed the roaring flames within. Presently, however, as your ears and eyes become more accustomed to your surroundings, you begin to realise there is definite order and reason in all this apparent chaos, and that you are indeed witnessing a fine piece of team vrork — fqr not only have the engine crew to pay strict attention to the road ahead -—signals, and the keeping of their time-table —but also they must get the very best out of their charge—in express work particularly a task requiring expert skill. Thus as the fireman swings his shovel -—on a heavily graded section he may have to shovel a ton of coal an hour —

you see him glance alternately at the pressure gauge and the water level—it is his job to produce steam in the right quantities at the right time while the driver puts it to the most economical use.

Specially writt<#i for our page by R. M. JENKINS. Kilblrnie, Wellington

Our eyes are now turned to this latter figure—who sits motionless on the right hand side of the cab, grasping the throttle lever and peering intently into that white beam of light ahead. There is something notable about this man—it is not merely his tense expression—nor his complete mastery of the bellowing machine beneath his hand —nor even the fact that in that same hand he holds the lives, with all their hopes, loves and follies, of 200 passengers in the train behind him—but a certain indefinable quality that marks him apart from other mortals. He is master of a craft—a man who has devoted his whole life to a job that attains the dignity of a service demanding the highest qualities of manhood. At an early age—sixteen or thereabouts—he entered the loco sheds as a cleaner, and began a term of night work that had much to do with oily waste, rationed kerosene and a Bhed foreman who combined a heavy-handed sense of duty with a love of highly polished brass. There was no stint of brass on the engines <jf those days. Even the polishing of enormous brass domes, hov, 'ever, cannot dampen tho enthusiasm of the true railwayman, and he rapidly learnt all there was to know about the engines that came under his care, and to begin to absorb the traditions of the service of which he was to become such a worthy member. After several years, a lucky chance brought him promotion to firing a "tank," an engine which rattled about •the goods yard day and night with waggons of loco coal —and from here it was but a step to relieving on a short country run witli a ballast train. He did well, he was keen and did not try to show ofF, but kept his steam at the regulation 1601b. and the water just showiug t*ilow the top of the gauge glass—and soon he lost the "acting" part of his title and became fireman of a yard shunter. Through the years he mounted step by step—yard shunter—local goods—mixed trains —express work —learning all the whims'3ind idiosyncrasies that the locomotive is heir to, and absorb-

ing every detail of the road, so that he knew always where he was on the darkest night or in the thickest fog, and could negotiate its stiffest grades in the foulest weather with the crankiest drivers without losing either his temper or a pound of steam. All of which brought him back almost to where he started from —for his next step was back into the cab of a yard shunter —only this time on the right hand side, the driver's side. If he found the narrow footplate a trial, or shunting irksome after the roomy cabs and long runs of the expresses, he never showed it, but handled his old "F" as if she was the newest thing out of the shops with the finest train in the country behind her. Promotion was slower this time, but none the less sure —his skill and keenness saw to that —until he slips at last into the coveted driver's seat of the Limited. And there we leave him, peering intently at the flashing walls of cuttings where the dripping water twinkles in the headlight's glare—whistling for the crossings that he knows are there long before they flash out of the murk and are gone easing his singing monster with the touch of a fine horseman over the tangled tracks at junctions —a fine heroic figure, physically fit, mentally alert, master of the situation always, doing a job that is worth the doing—and doing it with all the best that is in him.

He has always worked long and jrregular hours and faced all the variations of the weather by night and day, with meals snatched as occasion permitted, but he has found it a healthy life, if not a wealthy one. Like all men who are doing a real man's work and carrying responsibility always, ho has not had time to worry about little things, and so carries himself as a real man should; calm when things go wrong; merry when things go right; dependable, true, and responsible always. He waves with a smile to the women and children in the lonely farms' and cottages; he searches the gloom for a cheering green light and always finds one; he pities the rich in the sleepers but laughs with tho girl who meets her lover at the little fussy station —but always ho pulls in the Limited on time to a second at the spacious arrival platform at Auckland station. A good man doing a real man's job!