Railroaders' Nostalgia > Well done, brick arch repairman

A lucky few railroaders I encountered in my career lived to be over 100 years old.

One such person spent much of his career repairing the brick arch in steam locomotives at a small backshop that repaired pusher (helper) engines and any others that experienced brick arch damage in the firebox while in daily service.

Often, the locomotives were still hot after dumping the fire and would be needed shortly to be back in service.

Other shopmen worried that the brick arch man was shortening his life by being "cooked" in many locomotive fireboxes.

He was a tiny man who fit easily through a firebox door. He had an assistant who was the "outside man" who handed his co-worker the appropriate tools and bricks. It was truly a "Mutt and Jeff" situation, as the outside man was big and strong.


He would insert the brick arch man into the firebox on a long plank. The brick arch man went in head first, and the outside man would pass bricks to him. The outside man was instructed to extract the brick arch man should he pass out or become incoherent.


Often, this took place at night when all the other shopmen had gone home. Engine crews would walk through the shop on the way to the roundhouse,
and would hear this ghostly dialogue coming from deep within a locomotive.


The brick arch man lived to be 104 years old, was a great grandfather and maintained his mental faculties to the end.

When the shop was demolished, he had other shop staff put aside some of the special tools used on steam locomotives and they are displayed today in a railroad museum. He was able to supply descriptions of the tools and what they were for before he passed away about 20 years ago.

Quite interesting. A well-written story of a time in the past that we don't get to see much of anymore. I guess there are some small guys at some of the museums or shops where they do restoration work.

John

Kudo's to the memory of this artisan of the firebox arch.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

I had a client who was of too small stature to be drafted during WWII.
He wound up working as a welder in a shipyard,
often working in the voids deep in the bowels of a vessel, where other men were unable to enter.
He said that he coughed up black crud long after the end of his shift.
Lived into his mid-nineties. With a razor sharp intellect.
...Lorenzo

Back in the 1980s while asking research questions of every retired Union Pacific railroader I came across, I spoke with a few men who had worked in the boiler shops and quite a few others with acquaintances who had been involved with boiler and firebox work.  I was very pleasantly surprised to learn how many of those men had lived well into their nineties and was told of a few that made it to at least 100. Obviously working in the vicinity of asbestos was not necessarily always harmful.  GMUP



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/30/18 10:57 by GMUP.

The real deal is if you get cancer call one of those advertising lawyers and he'll find a way for you to claim asbestos settlements whether it caused it or not.

tomstp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The real deal is if you get cancer call one of
> those advertising lawyers and he'll find a way for
> you to claim asbestos settlements whether it
> caused it or not.

Are you implying that lawyers are dishonest or that all cancer claims with regard to asbestos are frivolous?

I have yet to see a cancer cell with a "made by asbestos" on it.  

I could tell you a lot about dishonest lawyers from my days of fighting  them.  Example of one:    Lawyer claimed a witness (he gave the name) would testify "so and so".  Only problem the witness he claimed made the statement was a deputy sheriff who was a brother to the adjuster for us  on the case   and never made the statement..   When told that his face turned white, he knew he had been caught...  .

Tomstp..you havent looked hard enough.  Asbestos and tabacco..sure fire early trip to buy the farm.
RB

A friend worked for a utility company during the late 1960's. He was part of a crew clearing vegetation away from a power line across northern Maine and southern New Brunswick.

The line went through some very remote country, so they camped under the power line. They were using the defoliant "Agent Orange", and were literally covered with it for days at a time.

At the end of the summer, the crew went off to do other things.  He heard of the effects of Agent Orange on those US servicemen who used it during the Vietnam War.

Decades went by, he went to work for the railroad across the Continent and lost contact with the other members of the utility company crew.

One day, one of them contacted him, asking if he would like to be part of a class action suite involving those people who had handled Agent Orange and developed cancer.

My friend was still in good health, and as far as I know still is. When contacted by another utility crew member, he asked what had happened to the other crew members, six in all.

Four had died, and the man contacting him had cancer but was a survivor.  I never heard if my friend received a settlement, or what happened to the other surviving crew member.

I wonder how much utility companies and the like used Agent Orange until it was found to cause cancer? Asbestos exposure seems to be similar as do other cancer causing agents.