Word: firebox
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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While Gilbert was shoveling coal in the mid-1920s, U.S. railroads began introducing the first diesel locomotives. Powered by an internal combustion engine, the diesels needed no firebox, no pile of coal-and no fireman. The diesels came onto U.S. railway tracks very gradually, and as late as 1937 fewer than 1% of the nation's locomotives were diesels. In that year the Brotherhood of Firemen foresightedly negotiated a contract with major railroads calling for two-man train crews. Fire or no fire, there was to be a fireman aboard...
...White Elephant. Promoted to engineer by the railroad. Royboy revived the moribund railroaders' trade union and became its leader. He then set out on a self-education program, broke railroad rules on his trips by turning the throttle over to the fireman; by the light of the firebox, he devoured books from Karl Marx to Sherlock Holmes...