Decrepit&Senile
Registered User
- Joined
- Aug 5, 2009
- Messages
- 323
I envy you. My history with real life steam railroading is zilch, even as a mere observer. I'm old enough to have witnessed steam firsthand during its final years. Alas, the Cotton Belt line that ran through my small hometown was one of the very first to completely mothball its entire steam roster. Didn't see my first live steam in action until very early in my military career, during a one or two day stay somewhere in Southeast Asia. Came across a smallish train yard with a decent number of steam locos in operation. At the tail-end of that career I was stationed in Japan two years and loved to ride its expensive passenger train network. But that, of course, wasn't steam driven.Inthe 1980s ans1990s I was involved in steam RR preservation ( I still am with a 2 foot narrow gauge line her in Maine) and I did a lot of engineering driving experiences in the U.K. varying between one day "courses" as the one I did on the " Flying Scotsman" at Birmingham where the morning was learning how to drive a small steam switching engine and the afternoon driving the Flying Scotsman up and down about 1/3 mile of track .
The best were the ones that took a week as the 9F driving one I did at the Watercress line where the 3 of us did everything from cleaning out 5he smoke box and waking up the engine early the morning then driving it up and down the full length of the line and pulling a full rake of 1950 and 1960s coaches the two of us doing the 'course' traded off the job of fireman and driver and you got 5he feeling of really knowing what we were doing. It was wonderful fun and at the end of the week we felt we had really earned the blisters on our hand and knocks cleaning the engine... all the details of when to add sand starting up on a grade with weight of all those coachs of bring it to a stop at just the right spot in the stations, of tending the fire to have enough steam for 5he hills but not too much that 5he safety valve would blow off...
It is a very happy memory of those years.

