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The Days of Steam:
Dilemmas of a
Fireman
By Bill Henderson - CP Pensioner
In the days of steam railroading, the lowly coal shoveler was sometimes called upon to make tough decisions.
When he was called for a trip, he would usually ask what engine he was getting and who the fireman was.
Some engines were poor steamers and some firemen were poor at making steam.
Yes, shovellers had it tough, they had to write all the rules and pass all the tests just like the rest of the men, but they also had to
have a strong back and know how to fire an engine.
To keep just the right amount of steam pressure in the boiler, he had to know where to put each shovel full into the firebox.
If the pressure became too great, the safety valves would open and the engine and crew would lose that hard-to-come-by steam.
I remember trips up the Fraser River Canyon in British Columbia.
I must have shovelled five tons of coal to get us to Ruby Creek, about 30 miles northeast of Agassiz.
There we would take on water and fill the tender with coal again.
Heading up the canyon, meeting other trains and doing the work along the way, we'd eat up another six tons or more during our eight-hour
shift.
And then, at the end of our run, we'd get the train put away, ready to get a little rest and maybe some sleep, just got the coal dust
washed off, when often as not the call boy would come in and call me for a return trip back home.
I was fully entitled to book some rest, of course, but that often meant the rest of the crew would have to wait for me before being able
to go home.
There would be another train sitting there ready to go, a conductor, an engineer, and two brakemen looking at me like they wanted to go
home real bad, and I just wanted to have a rest.
The head-end brakeman would offer to help shovel coal on the way back.
The engineer would say, "Hell, its all down hill, easy on steam".
I'd look at the guys about to cry, or maybe murder me.
So I'd take the call to go, even though my back was crying for rest.
So I'd grab a quick bite to eat at what we called the "beanery", with the guys watching.
Then I'd get up on the engine and put a good load of coal into the fire box, though it would usually turn out to be poor quality coal
from the Prairies, mostly dust, hard to keep in the fire box, as it just keeps shooting up the smoke stack.
It was four hours to get down to Ruby Creek, where we'd take on another load of coal, and all the big hills were now behind us.
That's when the conductor might come up and announce that we were going to pick up another 40 cars of wheat, an awful lot of tonnage for
this engine.
Well here we'd go again.
True to his promise, the head-end brakeman would occasionally take the shovel to let me have a smoke and maybe a 15-minute rest.
Sometimes half the coal would get stuck in the tender.
The coal we got at Ruby Creek would be wet and wouldn't slide down.
Now it would take two of us to fire the engine, one to shovel the coal ahead in the tender and the other one to shovel it into the fire.
The engineer would be calling for more steam.
Seems it wasn't all down hill after all.
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