Page:Railroad Gazette-Vol 38-136-000.png

98 would be glad to entertain their application. Please have any such as you can recommend write to me, giving their age, weight, height and school advantages, and I will communicate with them, if satisfactory.

It is desirable that those not familiar with service in the mechanical department should, for a few months, work at any and all kinds of roundhouse and shop work. To that intent, we find places for as many prospective firemen as possible at our various division points.

Mr. F. P. Roesch .—It seems there is quite a diversity of opinion as to what is required; one man wants brains, another wants brawn. Brain is needed just as much as muscle. A man can save more coal with his head than he can with his back. Most railroads now put a minimum limit on the weight of a man to be employed. It is not much harder to do the actual firing on the large locomotive of to-day than it was on the small locomotive of 20 years ago. I have fired engines with a fire-box about the size of my hat and from that up to the largest decapods that are built; and generally it is not the shoveling alone that wears out the fireman; it is the other duties connected with it, such as opening the door, that wear him out. We are expecting too much of the fireman nowadays. The pooling system has had quite a lot to do with the ruination of firemen. In old times each man had his own regular engine, and the fireman and the engineer practically owned the engine; they took a personal interest in the amount of coal consumed, and in the condition in which the engine was kept; they tried to keep it as neat as possible. To-day when a fireman gets off the engine, you do not know whether he is white or black. He sneaks through the alley; he is ashamed to be seen in the public streets. He has no place to put his clothes. Half the engines that are pooled have no “squirts” on them to wet down the coal; and they are dirty inside and out. We ask the fireman to help clean the engine, to fire it, to crack the coal, and to shake grates that are all coupled together so that three or four men could not shake them. No wonder the romance is gone. I have hired fireman in the East and in the West and the same conditions prevail in every place. Now, we can all adopt fine plans, and resolve strictly to adhere to them in hiring firemen; but if there comes a rush you will get messages like this: “Send me 20 firemen at once; am tied up.” Then we go down town and round up anything we can get hold of. Of course, it is well enough to promise ourselves to weed out afterwards, but it is always easier to get the men than it is to get rid of them. We might as well be honest with ourselves. When we get right up against it and we want an engineer real bad, we pick out the brightest fireman, and if he does not happen to pass all the questions, we shove him up anyhow, and trust to luck. This is the trouble. In our effort to save fuel instead of commencing at the cylinder, we should take up just exactly what we are taking up to-night—the question of firemen—and begin to save our coal at the wooden end of the scoop.

We ought to make things more pleasant for the firemen. Have their coal cracked; it does not cost much. It is economy and it saves fuel to have it cracked in firing sizes. Have the engine moderately clean; do not ask firemen to wipe these great big engines, where the jackets are measured by the acre. Give them a clean seat box to put their clothes in. Have a “squirt” to wet the coal down occasionally. Have the grate rigging so arranged that the fireman does not have to break his back to shake it.

Another question is this “preparing for the rush.” It has been suggested to have a lot of applications on file. I had a thousand last year. But when you send for these men you do not always get them. We ought to have bright young men in our roundhouses, either as machinists’ helpers or as wipers.

Mr. W. E. Symons (Kansas City Southern).—In reference to the different engines and the condition of the firemen, I think possibly it is not as bad in all places as has come under Mr. Roesch’s observation. My experience has been that in recent years both locomotive engineers and firemen have received very material and substantial increases in pay, and that their conditions have been bettered in various ways. I speak from personal experience, and I think I am correct in saying that on a large majority of the roads to-day the firemen do not clean their engines except the cabs. I personally know of a number of roads where they do not clean anything except cabs, and seldom ever clean the cab, and some of them are on runs where they are only two and one- half to three hours in real service. They are earning from $100 to $125 a month, which is more money than the most skilled mechanic can expect to earn after completing a long period of apprenticeship and entering upon his trade. As to shaking the grates, I believe that that is usually remedied where the engine crew take a personal interest in the engine, and co-operate with the roundhouse foreman and others in authority to the end that such defects as are discovered on the road may be properly remedied and repaired in the shop. Failing to do this, leaving a broken grate for the next man to take out produces unsatisfactory results. We try to get our firemen seat boxes; we arrange to put curtains on the cabs, we have “squirt” hose attachments to all the injector pipes, and my observation has been that a number of roads in the same territory are similarly equipped.

The question of seniority has had considerable to do with diminishing the interest of firemen in their work. But the introduction of progressive examinations and other educational features has resulted in quite an awakening among enginemen and the firemen. The Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine to-day is publishing a series of questions and answers and charts about technical subjects and mechanical subjects that if read and studied by the members of their craft, will aid largely in advancing them in their profession. I am told by local members of the fraternity that they are going to encourage this study all they can. Firemen, as a class, are better paid in proportion to the work they perform than any others. Therefore we have a right to expect from them good returns; and I believe we are in most cases getting them.

Although locomotives have often passed through serious fires in connection with collisions, or burning shops and engine sheds, it has rarely been the case that the engines so burned could not be repaired and again placed in service.

Such an instance, however, occurred in 1884 at Hunker, a station on the southwest branch of the, about 40 miles east of Pittsburgh. The branch at that time had but a single track, and immediately east of the station named was a long passing siding. About midnight, an engine drawing a long train of empty coke cars was approaching this siding rapidly, when it ran into a westbound engine drawing a long train of cars laden with coke, which had disregarded a red samaphoresemaphore [sic] signal one mile distant from the scene of the accident.

The crews of these trains escaped serious injury by jumping, but the engines were instantly covered by nineteen cars, most of which were loaded, and these piled up in a lofty mass which took fire and burned furiously for forty-eight hours. The flames were finally extinguished by a steam fire engine which was brought from Pittsburgh, and pumped water from a nearby stream, but the engines were so utterly ruined that the wrecking crew simply blew them into sec