Word: firemanning
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Chuca Choo, Chuca Choo. Several other railroad unions had the same kind of origin as the Firemen. Working on the railroad was a hazardous way of making a living in the 19th century. Many a fireman was scarred by a boiler explosion, many a yardman was mashed between cars. So often did brakemen fall from atop moving cars that one in three would be injured or killed in the course of a year. Understandably, insurance companies were reluctant to insure railroaders. In the railroad workers' need for insurance the first rail unions had their beginnings, as fraternal insurance societies...
...safety lookouts. Some diesel engineers frankly agree that firemen are dispensable. "I don't really need him," says an Ohio engineer, "but he's handy to have around. He gets four hours' sleep and I get four hours' sleep." Another diesel engineer tells of a fireman who always brought bedroom slippers to work. "I didn't mind that so much, but it got to be too much when he brought blankets one night, then complained he couldn't sleep because I had the lights...
...Fireman Gilbert can intone plenty of arguments against removing firemen from diesel locomotives-he has had a lot of practice at that. "Practical railroaders," he says, "rate the locomotive fireman as the most valuable safety factor available to the industry. His presence has meant the difference between disaster and saving lives and property on many occasions...
...unions, organized in Detroit in 1863, it was originally named the Brotherhood of the Footboard-a footboard being the catwalk on the front end of a locomotive. Head of the engineers is Grand Chief Engineer Roy Davidson, 62, a coal miner's son who started out as a fireman on a steam locomotive at 16. Along with engineers, the union's membership includes hostlers, the men who take over the locomotives once they enter railyards and shunt them off for maintenance operations or refueling...
Died. Walter Louis Hakanson, 64, Denver Y.M.C.A. executive, who in 1932 coined the name "softball" and wrote the first national rules for a game that was invented in 1895 by a Minneapolis fireman (he called it "kitten-ball"), but which never caught on until the Depression, when millions of unemployed found it a way to pass their time; after a long illness; in Denver...