Re: How to be a good fireman?

How to be a good fireman? Well first I have fired or engineered for Tweetsie RR for 7 years. We only have a small 3 mile loop, with a ruling grade of 5.125%. At one point we start off on a 4% pulling 80+tons.
To me a good fireman has to be a person that is a mature individual with rather humble attitude, and has a good deal of respect and fear of the machine. My first thing i tell fireman when training them is you need to learn to control the machine not let it control you. You do this by staying ahead of the engineer and the chilling affect of water going into the boiler.
Also what makes a fireman better is being able to fire for different engineers and adjust your firing to there steam consumption. Of course the most important thing in firing a steam engine is the water. A fireman should be able to understand his route enough to be able to know where the water is anytime. The best thing for fireman is to always remain humble and be willing to admit somethings wrong in situations where water may be low or fire is not hot enough.
I have engineered for 5 seasons at Tweetsie and had 3 fireman 2 were excellent and the other was really bad. The two good ones we made great team, we had great communications and formed a friendship. With this we were able to work in situations when things were tough and come through.
Tim