Engineer (transportation)

“ The passengers are his special care, and it is his business to see that their getting on and off is in accordance with their tickets. He is responsible for their comfort also, and must be an animated information bureau, loaded with facts about every conceivable thing connected with travel. The brakemen are his assistants, and stay with him to the end of the division; the engineer and fireman, with their engine, are cut off at the end of their division also.
The fastest train of a road is the pride of all its employees; all the trainmen aspire to a place on the flyer. ”

“ To get a freight train promptly over the road day after day, or night after night, an engineer must know the road intimately, not only marking the places where steam must be shut off for stations or grades, but every sag and rise must be engraved on his memory. Then he will be prepared to take advantage of slight descents to assist in getting him over short pulls, where, otherwise, he would lose speed ”

“ Both the engineer and the fireman were much interested in the bare-headed passenger, who seemed about as happy as a man can get and live. He took note of every move made by the engineer, smiling when the engine blew off steam, and frowning when the driver handled the throttle or lever in a rough or careless manner. ”

“ It is as important for the locomotive engineer to be familiar with the track as it is to be with the engine, and there is no field of engine driving or running in which more scope is permitted to the engineer to exercise judgment and skill in his management, so as to effect economy in fuel consumption. ”

“ The engineer prefers not to think of that. He prefers to think of a safe trip, terminal to terminal, to think of the long line covered, once again in safety, to think of the station at the far end of the division, where a relief engine and engineer will be in waiting to take the train another stage in its long journey across the land, to think of the home and family awaiting him. ”

“ A locomotive engineer makes a run for a hill in order that the momentum of his train will help carry him over. It is not so with a traction and its load; the momentum that you get don't push very hard.
The engineer who don't know how to throttle his engine never knows what it will do, and therefore has but little confidence in it; while the engineer who has a thorough knowledge of the throttle and uses it, always has power to spare and has perfect confidence in his engine. He knows exactly what he can do and what he cannot do. ”

“ But when thick darkness covers the earth, when the fitful gleam of the headlight shines on a mass of rain so dense that it seems like a water-wall rising from the pilot, or when blinding clouds of snow obliterate every bush and bank, it is important that the engineer should know every object of the wayside. ”

“ And this is especially true of the men who ride at the front, on that marvel of modern mechanism, the locomotive. Theirs is the post of danger and of responsibility, and singularly brave, cool, thoughtful, watchful, intelligent men they grow to be. You will all, I presume, become locomotive engineers. The way to the engineer’s seat, I am informed, is from the fireman’s side. I hope promotion will not be slow. The engineers, it is said, are the best paid body of skilled workmen in America. ”

“ The sensations of the locomotive engineer, who feels his great machine strain forward over the smooth steel rails, are as nothing to the almost numbing sensations of the automobile driver who covered space at the rate of eighty-eight miles an hour on the road between Paris and Madrid: he felt every inequality in the road, every grade along the way, and each curve, each shadow, was a menace that required the greatest nerve and skill. ”

“ When the engineer is satisfied that the truck, pilot-braces, center-castings, and all their connections, are in proper condition, he passes on to the motion. His trained eye scans every bolt, nut, and key in search of defects. The eccentrics are examined, to see that set screws and keys are all tight. ”

“ When a locomotive is thundering over a road ahead of a heavy train in which may be hundreds of human beings, the engineer ought to understand that the safety of this freight of lives depends to a great extent upon his care and foresight. As the train rushes through darkened cuttings, spans giddy bridges, or32 rounds curves edged by deep chasms, no one can understand better than the engineer the importance of having every nut and bolt about the engine in good condition, and in its proper place. ”

“ An engine pulls the cars, steam works the engine, and as for the engineer, the New Yorker never thinks of him except to growl at him when the train is late, and to advocate hanging him if there is an accident.
Meantime, what is the engineer of this fastest train in the world doing for the passenger? In the first place, the Chicago flyer is not driven by one but by many engineers. ”

“ Everyone knows that locomotive engineers are men not to be approached unadvisedly or lightly, and an engineer with his train in difficulties is especially formidable. This one was just climbing back into his cab after a consultation with the conductor, and swung round quickly, aware of Jack just behind him. ”

“ But the day does come, if he sticks hard at it, when he [Pg 247] becomes an engineer. He has learned the line well, during his countless trips over it as fireman. He has come to know every signal, every bridge, every station, every curve, every grade, every place for slow, careful running, every place for speeding, as thoroughly as ever river pilot learned his course. There have been many times when he has had to assume temporary charge of the engine. He is a qualified man at least to sit in the right hand of the cab, to have command over reverse lever and over throttle. ”

“ Most people here probably think that, because we're engineers, we run locomotives. That's what the word 'engineer' suggests to ignoramuses. Now, the man who runs a locomotive should properly be called an engine-tender, or engineman, while it's the fellow who surveys and bosses the building of a railroad that is the engineer. You get a smattering of engineering work at West Point, don't you? ”

“ He has to cross three intersecting roads in the making of his trip, and, in addition to his work as an engineer, the labor of hostling or caring for the engine is imposed upon him, while the engineer for the North-Western is not obliged to care for his engine. ”

“ By means of reports sent in by hundreds of different operators, he knows the2 exact location of all trains at all times, the number of "loads" and "empties" in each train, the number of cars on each siding, the number of passing tracks and their capacity, the capabilities of the different engines, the gradients of the road, the condition of the roadbed, and, above all, he knows the personal characteristics of every conductor and engineer on the road. In fact if there is one man of more importance than another on a railroad it is the train despatcher. ”

“ Machine-shops, engine-houses, and such apparatus, differ but slightly upon different roads; but the form and dimensions of the locomotive engines should depend upon the nature of the traffic, and upon the physical character of the road, and that most intimately, —so much, indeed, that the adjustment of the grades and curvatures must determine the power, form, and whole construction of the engine. This is a fact but little appreciated by the managers of our roads; when the engineer has completed the road-bed proper, including the bridging and masonry, he is considered as done with ”

“ This is where a machinist’s skill does not apply to locomotive-running until it is supplemented by an intimate knowledge of speed, of facility at handling a train, and keeping the couplings intact, and of insight into the best methods of economizing steam.
These are essentials which every man should possess before he is put in charge of a locomotive on the road. The great fund of practical knowledge which stamps the first-class engineer, is amassed by general labor during years of vigilant observation on the footboard, amidst many changes of fair and foul weather. ”

“ But despite this the enginer sits upon the right of his cab, because he can in this place better observe the track and signals in front and to his right, and with the dominant right eye only outside of the cab-window, whereas, if sitting on the left, he would be compelled to put the entire head out in order to see with the right eye, and, even then, because of the boiler, not so well. Only right-eyedness will explain the long, doubtful, and varying custom in engine-building as to the position of the engineer in the beginning of history of railway construction and signaling. ”

“ The locomotive engineer must control a marvelously complex and ponderous piece of mechanism, keeping his sight and hearing and sense of shock so alive that amid the universe of whirl and glare and explosive rattle in which, for the time, he is centered, he can detect the foreign note or quiver that speaks of disarrangement. ”

“ The conductor, William A. Fuller; the engineer, I. Cain, both of this city; and the passengers were at the table, when some eight men, having uncoupled the engine and three empty box-cars next to it, from the passenger and baggage-cars, mounted the engine, pulled open the valve, put on all steam, and left conductor, engineer, passengers, spectators, and the soldiers in the camp hard by, all lost in amazement, and dumbfounded at the strange, startling, and daring act. ”

“ CONNECTING-RODS, SIDE RODS, AND WEDGES. CARE OF LOCOMOTIVE RODS.
When it is found that an engineer runs his engine for months on arduous train service, and has no trouble with his rods, he may safely be credited with knowing his business, and attending to it skillfully. In regard to the keeping of the machinery in working-order, the engineer’s duties are mostly of a supervisory nature. When piston-rings get blowing, when guides need closing, or when a pump gets working badly, he reports the matter; and the work is done so that the defect is remedied. ”

“ First the regular engine leaves the train and a special switch engine couples on. The engineer of the switch engine has a radio telephone in the cab, so he can listen to orders from the towerman who unscrambles the train. ”

“ As a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers observes: "The big electrical engines which are being introduced in the railroad system are rapidly eliminating the factors of judgment on the part of the engineer and transforming that highly skilled trade into an automatic exercise." ”

“ The locomotive engine which reaches nearest perfection, is one which performs the greatest amount of work at the least cost for fuel, lubricants, wear and tear of machinery, and of the track traversed: the nearest approach to perfection in an engineer, is the man who can work the engine so as to develop its best capabilities at the least cost. ”

“ And yet the problem of location, the determination, foot by foot and mile by mile, of where the line must go, calls in its successful solution for the highest skill of the engineer, whose profession before the railway was created hardly existed at all. ”

“ In discussing4 and comparing the appliances used in the practical operating of railroads in different countries, there is one element, however, which can never be left out of the account. The intelligence, quickness of perception, and capacity for taking care of themselves,—that combination of qualities, which, taken together, constitute individuality, and adaptability to circumstances,—vary greatly among the railroad employés of different countries. The American locomotive engineer, as he is called, is especially gifted in this way. ”

“ To most travellers time is more valuable than money, and so everything about a train is planned to facilitate rapid travelling. Almost every part of a locomotive is controlled from the cab, which prevents unnecessary stopping to correct defects; from his seat the engineer can let the condensed water out of the cylinders; he can start a jet of steam in the stack and create a draft through the fire-box; by the pressure of a lever he is able to pour sand on a slippery track, or by the manipulation of another lever a snow-scraper is let down from the cowcatcher. ”

“ Number 1 is the engineer’s weekly return to the master of machinery, and gives, as seen, the times of arriving at, and departing from, each station. The fuel should always be ready at each station for delivery, in cords and half cords, or in tons and fractions, when coal or coke. ”

“ He reads his copy aloud to the dispatcher, compares his watch with the big official clock, and then goes down to his train. As soon as the engine is coupled on, he gives the engineer his copy of the orders, which the engineer must read aloud to him. Then they compare watches, and the conductor goes off to show the orders to the rear brakeman, while the engineer shows his copy to the fireman and front brakeman. Thus every member of the crew knows under what orders the train is to proceed and its movement is not dependent upon the memory of one man alone. ”

“ On most roads, the engineer and fireman are required to be at their engine from fifteen minutes to half an hour before train-time. A good fireman will reach the engine in time to perform his preliminary duties deliberately and well. He will have the dust brushed off from the cab-furnishing, and from the conspicuous parts of the engine, the deck swept clean, the coal watered, and the oil-cans ready for the engineer. ”

“ Engineers in both Europe and America were straining every energy to apply the steam engine to the propulsion of wagons along a highway. No one at first looked upon the railroad as a separate and distinct industry. ”

“ On a small railway the chief engineer as a line officer may be able to do all the engineering himself. As the business grows he requires such special staff advisers as an office engineer, a locating engineer, a bridge engineer, a tunnel engineer, a signal engineer, etc. ”