Steam & Excursion > In need of some good lye soap.

After hanging around live steam locomotives for a while, one gets used to the idea that the folks that work on them are bound to get pretty filthy. That thought got me to thinking about how one would get cleaned up "back in the day", including those grime-coated overalls and shirts. I guess a suitable quantity of good old fashioned lye soap would be employed, as would the nasty effect it would have on the skin of anyone that had to do the scrubbing. Or did a little kerosene come to the rescue first?

And the guy in this image, though looking like he had sat on something pretty grimy, was no were near the most grime-covered individual I saw at the NNRY's recent event.

- Kit

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

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Borax soap maybe. I remember my Grand mother using this around the hose in Davis, with farming grease.

Kit ----
That is a great photo! But that guy's overalls
are CLEAN, compared to what I remember of
the condition of my coveralls and those of
other folks in Project 2472 back in the day
when we were doing her first restoration.
I swear, our overalls could just about have
stood up by themselves after a day working
on the '72!

Now I remember an old steam-era way
to get your hands clean after getting all
grimy working on a steam locomotive:
get some of the grease on your hands,
then get them wet from the condensed
steam that dripped from various places
on the locomotive. That saponified
(had soap compounds in it) grease really
did a great job of cleaning our hands.

Yeah, borax works great, too -- but we
didn't seem to have it handy. Never thought
of it back then. Silly me!

I agree, that guys clothes don't qualify for even getting started on being dirty yet.

Interesting valve gear. Would that be a Baker applied backwards?

Also she has had her slide valves upgrade with a piston valve conversion kit!

-John

Your post reminded me of this shot. That's me in 1986, shoveling sand (soaked with oil) out of the smokebox of V&T #25. That kind of grime doesn't come off 'til you shed a layer of skin. I remember we were overhauling the boiler on D&R #8. My hands had permanently ground in black grime, my fingers were like raw hamburger from inserting 168 razor sharp copper ferrules in her tube sheet and my arms were black and blue from bucking an air hammer all week. I was standing in line at the market when the woman in line behind me scanned me up and down for a moment before asking, "What the hell do you do for a living?!"

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To see the real dirtiest "individual" on the NN, take a look at Mike Massee's post from 3/1/13, at <http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3009235,3009274#msg-3009274&gt;, showing three photos of "Dirtball", the NN Shop Cat!

While originally my intent with this thread was to see if anyone had any further ideas about getting cleaned up "back in the day", and not to create a contest for who can post the image showing the grimiest dude in the shop . . .

Here are the two guys that spent Saturday (Valentines day!) morning fixing a fallen grate in #93's firebox. The guy on the right got to climb through the fire door hole after only 12 hours or so after the fire had been dropped the afternoon before. I think the soot stuck to every drop of sweat he exuded during the experience.

Kit Courter
Menefee, CA
LunarLight Photography

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lynnpowell Wrote:
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> To see the real dirtiest "individual" on the NN,
> take a look at Mike Massee's post from 3/1/13, at
> , showing three photos of "Dirtball", the NN Shop
> Cat!


Well, that's what cats are for isn't it - dust rags?

Kerosene worked pretty good when I was working in a paper mill bull gang. Then, remember the song "Grandma's Lye Soap?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/15 15:02 by nycman.

nycman Wrote:
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> Kerosene worked pretty good when I was working in
> a paper mill bull gang. Then, remember the song
> "Grandma's Lye Soap?"


Which, incidentally, you can still buy in the Upper Midwest.
Saw it in Ace Hardware on Friday.....

My wife was very patient when I got my son a summer job on the NH&I back when he was a junior in high school. The ONLY time she got upset is when our washing machine died after too many tangles with oil, grease and coal soot. Those overalls came home really dirty when Mike was a student fireman!! I sure did not mind!!!

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And don't forget LAVA hand soap. It takes off the first layer or two of skin but you are "clean"!

Wow Crackerjack, I don't think I have ever been that dirty in my entire life, and I have been in mud puddles.

How far 'back in the day' do you want to go?

In the 1950s I worked on cars a lot, and got easily as dirty as most of the pictures shown here when working on an engine that leaked oil. A couple of passes with dirty and less dirty rags and some gasoline would take the lumps of grease and the like off my hands and arms, and the scrub brush and some gas would get some of the dirt out from under my fingernails. That got me clean enough to use a rag to open a doorknob and get into the back porch and the scrub sink there, and some of the miracle medicine known as "mechanic's hand soap" would get most of the rest of the surface and some of the embedded grease out of my skin. A little Boraxo bar soap would get most of the rest off. Cleaning the work clothes started with scraping off the thickest of the grease spots, then rubbing dry dirt into the grease and brushing that off with a broom. Some more gas or paint thinner in a pail and a scrub brush would take the majority of the grease out of the grease spots. Then a run through the machine (or two) with a lot of Tide, and hang on the line. Worked pretty well.

I don't know when mechanic's hand soap came into existence, but I'd bet it was in the 1930s or earlier. So it could have been used back then by railroad folks. Boraxo, kerosene, lye soap, and other tricks also worked. Lye soap had the disadvantage that it ate the clothing, so you probably couldn't use a lot of it. Cloths were expensive back then.

My Wife, Friday after cleaning the smoke box of Sierra Railway #3.
Now the trick that I use to get the grease and Grime out of her bibs is to first spray them with a good strong Starch.
Then each time prior to putting them into the dryer spray them again. Keeps even the toughest of grease, oils or other Locomotive grime from setting in.

Stephanie is also a qualified Fireman/Engineer at Railtown 1897

Dave

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PHall Wrote:
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> And don't forget LAVA hand soap. It takes off the
> first layer or two of skin but you are "clean"!


Ah yes! The next step after gritty Boraxo from the restroom dispenser.

Over many years I've learned that using a good sized wad of rod pin grease, after it has been squeezed through the rod bearing, makes excellent hand soap. The combination of the sodium soap thickened pin grease with its embedded oils, cleans ones hands with just a bit of water, and also leaves them nice and soft.

HotWater Wrote:
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> Over many years I've learned that using a good
> sized wad of rod pin grease, after it has been
> squeezed through the rod bearing, makes excellent
> hand soap. The combination of the sodium soap
> thickened pin grease with its embedded oils,
> cleans ones hands with just a bit of water, and
> also leaves them nice and soft.
Bill Stetler taught me this also a few years ago while servicing the '49 one evening. Conveniently, the overflow on the 49's injector provides the perfect temperature of warm water to wash one's hands with the "soap". Also, back to the original post, this picture is probably early in the morning. Check the guys overalls after a whole day on the engine.