A story from the days of Steam!

 Todays story comes from Thom Cholowski, Administrator of the Historic Saskatchewan FB page. Enjoy 73

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Funny railway story from the steam days as told to me by a veteran Canadian Pacific Railway engineer.

Alex Lucak (1918-2011) had a 35 year career with the CPR beginning in 1943, working primarily out of Sutherland (Saskatoon). I had the pleasure of interviewing him several times about his career and he shared many colourful stories, especially about his time working on steam locomotives.

Alex was normally a quiet, dignified and proper gentleman in the time that I knew him, but as he got to know me and understood my background (having worked almost 20,000 hours as a steam locomotive engineer/fisherman/mechanic, mostly on ex CPR steam locomotives), he found somewhat of a kindred spirit who, as I ‘spoke his language’ gradually viewed me as a colleague rather than a curious youngster.

As his trust grew, he began to readily share life experiences and open up. He loved talking, becoming more lively in his stories and - I say this with the upmost respect- started to freely use more and more ‘colourful’ language that would be wholly appropriate in the cab of a locomotive.

When Alex would share his stories with me, a funny thing would happen, almost every single time. Alex used to walk hunched over, with a stoop and the assistance of a cane. When he would begin his stories he would shuffle over to a chair and get comfortable sitting with his hands on his legs, leaning forward for the important details, raising his bushy eyebrows, while his right hand rested on his cane. As the story went on, Alex would start to wave his hands around and at some point, he would stand up to ‘go through the motions’ to demonstrate his adventure. Invariably, by the time he reached the end, the cane was gone and Alex was up out of his chair, bouncing around the room, hands wildly gesturing, standing fully upright, slapping his knee and laughing heartily.

One time, at the end of a story his wife Anne came in and in shock said ‘Alex! You’re standing upright!!!’, to which he replied with out missing a beat ‘Well how the Hell else am I supposed to stand?’😆

Anyhow, on to the story.

Alex had just completed his 3 student trips under the supervision of a ‘set up’ fireman and was called up off the spare board to go on his first trip by himself on a night time freight run onboard a #2500 series, G2 class ‘Pacific’, 4-6-2 locomotive. This class was not equipped with a ‘mechanical’ stoker to feed coal into the firebox, so Alex had his job cut out for him shoveling a scoop full at a time into the hungry firebox.

The run was between Sutherland and Wynyard, a distance of 113 miles, and with the heavy freight train, Alex would have to shovel by hand almost 14 tons of coal to get the engine over the road.

They had just passed the halfway point at Lanigan when Alex paused to wipe the sweat from his brow. He gazed up at the engineer’s seat box and his blood ran ice cold.

The engineer was no where in sight.

The cab of a CPR steam locomotive is a small, cozy place that is designed for a singular purpose of running a locomotive and there is nowhere a person can hide. Alex, frozen in fear, mid pose as he was wiping his brow, quickly scanned the cab for any trace of the engineer.

He was simply gone.

Alex quickly took stock of his situation. He was completely alone in the cab of a steam locomotive, at night, doing 35 miles per hour, with a fully loaded freight train behind him, full of steam and heading to Wynyard, and the engineer, THE person in control of the whole show was nowhere to be found.

Frozen in absolute terror, Alex contemplated his options and indeed, the entirety of his life and the choices that led him to this exact moment.

Before Alex could react, he watched the engineer shuffle by the OUTSIDE of the cab window, hand over hand, swing in through the cab door and assume his position in the engineer’s seat. He adjusted his coat and pants, pulled out his pipe placing it between his teeth, tamped and lit it and set his hand authoritatively on the throttle as if nothing had happened.

Alex stood there dumbfounded. The engineer looked up and down at him and said ‘What…the headlight was dirty!’

Alex shook his head in disbelief and went back to the routine of taking a shovel of coal, taking a few steps ‘doing the dance’, stepping on the pedal to open the ‘butterfly’ doors of the firebox to feed the iron horse and repeating the process until the got to Wynyard.

Now for those unfamiliar with steam locomotives, what had happened was this- the seasoned engineer, knowing that this was Alex’s first solo trip had pulled a prank on him.

While the train was running at 35 miles per hour, and while Alex was preoccupied with shoveling coal, he had set the throttle, and using the handrails along the outside of the cab and boiler, walked along the length of the speeding locomotive to ‘wipe the headlight’ with a handful of cotton waste, at the prow of the engine and return! Some joke!

I will always treasure the stories told to me by Alex and his fellow railroaders of that generation who have long since gone to the great ‘roundhouse in the sky’.