No demand for illiterate or ignorant engineers has ever arisen in America. Many men who have spent an important portion of their lives on the footboard, have risen to grace the highest ranks of the mechanical and social world. The pioneer engines, which demonstrated the successful working of locomotive power, were run by some of the most accomplished mechanical engineers in the country. As an engine adapted to the work it has to perform, the American locomotive is recognized to have always kept ahead of its compeers in other parts of the world. No inconsiderable part of this superiority is due to the fact, that nearly all the master mechanics who control the designing of our locomotives have had experience in running them, and thereby understand exactly the qualities most needed for the work to be done.
GROWING IMPORTANCE OF ENGINEERS’ DUTIES.
The safe and punctual operation of our railroads has always depended to a great extent upon the discriminating care of the engineer. The present tendency of railroad operating is to increase his responsibility. Every advance in brake improvement increases the duties of the enginemen, and upon them will soon devolve the entire management and control of trains while in motion.
INDIVIDUALITY OF AMERICAN ENGINEERS.
Writing on the fitness of various railroad employés for their duties, that eminent authority, Ex-Railroad-Commissioner Charles F. Adams, jun., says, “In discussing and comparing the appliances used in the practical operating of railroads in different countries, there is one element, however, which can never be left out of the account. The intelligence, quickness of perception, and capacity for taking care of themselves,—that combination of qualities, which, taken together, constitute individuality, and adaptability to circumstances,—vary greatly among the railroad employés of different countries. The American locomotive engineer, as he is called, is especially gifted in this way. He can be relied on to take care of himself and his train under circumstances which in other countries would be thought to insure disaster.”
NECESSITY FOR CLASS IMPROVEMENT.
While American locomotive engineers can confidently invite comparison between their own mechanical and intellectual attainments and those of their compeers in any nation under the sun, there still remains ample room for improvement. If they are not advancing, they are retrograding. The engineer who looks back to companions of a generation ago, and says that we know as much as they did, but no more, implies the assertion that his class is going backward. On very few roads, and in but rare instances, can this grave charge be made, that the engineers are falling behind in the intellectual race. On the contrary, there are signs all around us of substantial work in the cause of intellectual and moral advancement.
THE SKILL OF ENGINEERS INFLUENCES OPERATING EXPENSES.
No class of railroad-men affects the expenses of operating so directly as engineers do. The daily wages paid to an engineer is a trifling sum compared to the amount he can save or waste by good or bad management of his engine. Fuel wasted, lubricants thrown away, supplies destroyed, and machinery abused, leading to extravagant running repairs, make up a long bill by the end of each month, where enginemen are incompetent. Every man with any spark of manliness in his breast will strive to become master of his work; and, stirred by this ambition, he will avoid wasting the material of his employer just as zealously as if the stores were his own property; and only such men deserve a position on the footboard.
The day has passed away when an engineer was regarded as perfectly competent so long as he could take his train over the road on time. Nowadays a man must get the train along on schedule time to be tolerated at all, and he is not considered a first-class engineer unless he possesses the knowledge which enables him to take the greatest amount of work out of the engine with the least possible expense. To accomplish such results, a thorough acquaintance with all details of the engine is essential, so that the entire machine may be operated as a harmonious unit, without jar or pound: the various methods of economizing heat must be intimately understood, and the laws which govern combustion should be well known so far as they apply to the management of the fire.