Monday, May. 26, 1958
End of the Fireman
Steve Broady said to his black greasy
fireman
"Just shovel on a little more coal, And when we cross that White Oak
Mountain You can watch Old 97 roll!"
-The Wreck of the Old 97
When hand-stoked coal drove Old 97 down that mighty rough road from Lynchburg to Danville, the brawny fireman was as essential as the engineer himself. Sweatily, he swung the heavy scoop between the clanking tender and the hellish firebox, pausing only rarely to rest his arm on the ledge of the left-hand window. But Old 97 and almost all the other steam locomotives have given way on U.S. and Canadian railroads to unsung diesels.
Last week, in Canada, the firemen gave way too. After a bitter, two-year struggle -regarded as a test case for all North American railroads -the giant. 17,000-mile Canadian Pacific Railway Co. finally wrested an admission from the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen that a fireman has no useful function on an oil-fired diesel locomotive. To establish the principle, the C.P.R. proposed to remove firemen from yard and freight diesels. Arguing passionately that the fireman was vital as a safety lookout, the union last week tried to shut down the C.P.R. with a strike, watched in dismay as their fellow rail workers coolly crossed picket lines and kept the trains running on time. After three days, the firemen blew a whistle on the strike. The ailing U.S. railroads (see BUSINESS), which in 1956 withdrew a demand for the right to drop firemen so that the battle could be fought out in Canada, may be expected to follow C.P.R.'s lead when the union contract runs out on Oct. 31, 1959.
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