Kinda off topic, but while everyone is talking about firing:

My hometown is Kenova, WV, which was built by the N&W. The N&W mainline runs through it, with a large bridge spanning the Ohio River. There was a small steam era terminal and roundhouse in steam days, and my grandfather was a N&W engineer. Several N&W "old heads" lived in the town when I was growing up.

One "old head", Mr. Hatten, lived down the street from me, and was a fireman on the N&W. He told his story about one time after leaving Williamson, WV with just over 100 loads of West Virginia's finest black rocks, the stoker quit on their class A. Their run to Portsmouth, OH was generally level with a small climb up the approach to the river bridge. They had an aux. tender and made the trip "hooked up as high as we could".

He hand fired the entire way, and left Williamson with 290lbs and arrived with 150lbs.

Mr. Hatten is now gone, as are most all of that era of railroaders.

If my fading memory serves me correctly, Ken, you and Marty worked as the regular crew on at least one occasion as well. Which caused serious heart burn for a few individuals at the time.

The engineer on the train this last week was firing the last remaining coal burner on the D&S last year for its winter special for both days.

https://www.railpictures.net/photo/797394/
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/796930/

J.J. Young told a similar story about an EM-1 that choked on a stray roof bolt during a Holloway Hump run. There are pictures of the small gaggle of ride-along railfans heaving coal into the firebox like they were playing baseball in Hades. He said he wasn’t throwing coal for two reasons: he was holding the camera, and he was kicking the coal down to where the involuntary bullpen could reach.

On topic, of course women did that kind of work where and when they could. Given that a lot of women, and for that matter men, couldn’t, the outliers fit for the job could find a way in short handed times. During both world wars, in particular, a lot of theoretically impossible things happened. As usual, if no one in an official capacity had to take notice that part of the crew was underage (or had shoes with “18” written inside so they could say they were over that), the “wrong” skin shade, body shape or what have you, Nothing Like That Happened.

A little OT but worth sharing...on one of the ACE 3000 test runs in 1985 with the 614 we ran out of that days very low grade coal ( it was Powder River 8500 btu crap) about 15 miles short of our destination of Hinton W.Va.

Very luckily just as we did all along the engineers side of the ROW were piles and piles of scrap ties that had been removed recently, cut in 1/3rds. and neatly put into piles of several hundred pieces.

We formed a fire brigade type chain gang and loaded hundreds up onto the tender and they got us to Hinton with our 3,800 ton coal train.

We had to stop twice to build up steam as it was a pretty hard pull up that river grade and even starting on the feather, and throwing tie butts in as fast as humanely possible, in about 5-6 miles she'd be down to 150 lbs. and we needed to stop and build back up to 250 lbs.

But we got there. Great memories. Ross Rowland

Your memory is not faulty, Russ. We did two or three trips together. Always liked working with her. As you know, there were some who absolutely did not like it....

I have heard Kyla (the female D&S engineer) make comments to the effect that "It's just her job" several times. I have described her style as a conductor as Shack from Emperor of the North as played by Lisa Kudrow. Meant as a compliment, of course. She told me she likes Lisa Kudrow, but has never seen the movie!

I haven't ridden behind Kyla yet (other than part way around the Durango loop a few times), but one of my occasional jobs is dumping the potty tanks on the cars when the trains return to Durango. I'm usually glad if Kyla is running for that operation. She tends to be a lot more gentle on the draft gear than most of the male hoggers for the stop-and-start drudgery of dumping. I get that it gets challenging to stop and start without banging around the back end of a fifteen-car train, on a sharply curved balloon track, without squandering away your train air. Let's just say that some engineers are better at it than others, and a piece of a draft gear spring is hanging on a railing back there as a reminder!