Running a steam train took a close-knit team, each with clearly defined duties. Two worked the engine itself, the footplate crew, while a third looked after the train behind. But reaching the footplate at all, and rising to take charge of an express, was the work of a lifetime. It began with a boy cleaning cold engines in the shed. Here is who did what, and the long road a cleaner travelled to become a driver.
The driver
The driver was in charge of the locomotive and responsible for working the train safely and to time. He operated the regulator (the steam control that governs power) and the reverser (which sets the cut-off, the point in the stroke at which steam is shut off to the cylinders), applied the brakes, and above all observed and obeyed every signal. Before each turn he carried out his oiling round, working methodically over the motion with a long-spouted can. A driver also had to “know the road”: every gradient, curve, signal and speed restriction on his route, often in darkness or fog. He was only permitted to work trains over routes he had learned and signed for. Driving was the senior footplate role, reached only after many years as a fireman.
The fireman
The fireman kept the engine in steam, gruelling and highly skilled physical work. He built and maintained the fire, judging exactly where and when to shovel coal so the boiler made steam steadily without wasting fuel or blowing off. He kept the boiler topped up with water through the injectors, watching the gauge glass constantly, and he kept a sharp lookout, calling signals with the driver. A good fireman could shovel several tons of coal on a long run. Firing was far more than labour. It was the long apprenticeship through which every driver rose.
The guard
While the footplate crew ran the engine, the guard was in charge of the train as a whole. He rode in the brake van at the rear, was responsible for the safety of the passengers or the security of the load, and kept the train's paperwork. He could apply his own brake to help control the train, especially on loose-coupled goods trains on gradients, and he made certain the tail lamp was shown: the signalman's proof that the train had passed complete, with nothing left behind in the section.
From cleaner to driver: a lifetime on the footplate
No one started as a driver. The footplate was a strict ladder, climbed almost entirely by seniority (length of service rather than ability), and a man might spend twenty years or more on it before he won a regular turn at the regulator.
The engine cleaner
Almost every driver began as a teenage engine cleaner in the locomotive shed, the lowest and worst-paid grade on the footplate. Armed with cotton waste and oil, cleaners wiped the grime from boilers, wheels and motion, often through the night. It was filthy, thankless work, but it taught a boy the anatomy of a locomotive part by part, and it kept him in the shed where the casual firing turns were handed out.
Passed cleaner
Once a cleaner had learned enough and passed an examination on the rules, he became a passed cleaner: still a cleaner by grade, but now permitted to act as a fireman when one was needed, perhaps on a quiet shunting or local turn. These first firing turns, taken whenever the shed was short-handed, were a young man's foot in the door.
The fireman
When a fireman's vacancy came up, the senior passed cleaner moved up to become a fireman in his own right. Crews were organised into links, rosters of work graded from the humblest shed and shunting duties up to the prestige main-line expresses. A new fireman started in the bottom link and worked his way up over many years, again by seniority, mastering the craft of firing on heavier and faster trains as he climbed. The most senior men worked the top link, the express passenger turns that were the summit of the trade.
Passed fireman
After years of firing, a man could sit the driving examination. Passing it made him a passed fireman: qualified to drive, and called upon to do so when required, but still rostered as a fireman until a permanent driving vacancy opened. His first driving work was usually the least glamorous, shunting in the yard or the preparation and disposal of engines: lighting up and raising steam at the start of the day, then dropping the fire, raking out the ashpan and cleaning the smokebox at the end. A passed fireman might wait years for a regular driving turn of his own.
Driver, and the top link
Promotion to a permanent driver's turn began the climb all over again, from the bottom link upward. Only the most senior drivers ever reached the top-link express work, frequently no more than a few years before they retired. A career that began with a boy cleaning a cold engine in the small hours might reach a named express only after thirty or forty years of service.
Learning the trade: Mutual Improvement Classes
Much of this knowledge was handed on through Mutual Improvement Classes (MIC): voluntary, usually unpaid classes that the men ran themselves, with senior drivers and inspectors teaching the rules, the signalling and the workings of the locomotive. Footplatemen gave up their own time to attend, knowing that examinations, and promotion, lay ahead.
When steam gave way to diesel
The 1955 Modernisation Plan committed British Railways to replacing steam with diesel and electric traction, and the change came with startling speed. Main-line steam ended on 11 August 1968, when the “Fifteen Guinea Special” made its farewell run, and from the following day steam was banned from the network. At many depots the switch happened almost overnight: men who had fired steam one week were working diesels the next.
For footplatemen it changed everything. A diesel or electric locomotive has no fire, so the fireman's craft, the very skill that had defined the apprenticeship, was made redundant at a stroke. The role did not vanish, but it altered beyond recognition. On the new traction the second man became the secondman (or driver's assistant), still there to share the lookout, help with shunting and learn the road, but with no fire to feed and no coal to shift.
The old ladder broke down with it. With no firing route into driving, the long progression from cleaner to fireman to driver no longer made sense. Recruits could be trained far more directly, and short traction courses in the classroom and the cab replaced years of learning by doing. Road knowledge remained as vital as ever, but engine preparation, disposal and the daily oiling round were hugely reduced.
The secondman's role was itself gradually withdrawn from the late 1970s as Driver Only Operation (DOO) spread, until on many trains a single driver worked alone. In little more than a generation, the crowded and sociable world of the steam shed, with its cleaning gangs, casual firing turns and Mutual Improvement Classes, had largely passed into history.
Behind the scenes
Many more people kept the railway running: signalmen in their boxes working the signals and points; shed staff who cleaned, coaled, watered and prepared engines; fitters who maintained them; and the platform, booking and permanent-way staff who kept stations and track in order. A steam railway was, above all, a vast human enterprise.
More in this section: Railway Signals & Signalling · How a Steam Locomotive Works