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When I started "down the shed" in the 1950s, I started as an engine cleaner, which not only involved cleaning engines under our very strict cleaning supervisor Bill Cundy, but also we used to go in to the fireboxes and replaces fire bars, then as we progressed we were employed on the Ashpit, and helping out on the coaling plant and then a bit further up the ladder we were sent to firing school, I went to firing school at Rugby.My very first firing turn as a passed cleaner was on the Arley banker with a super "D", it was a nightmare, really hard work and I went home saying I was packing the job in, but nearly 50 years later I was still there until I retired. But I know passed firemen that were nearly middle aged before they got to driver.
I dont think having a secondman is a bad thing, I totally disagree with this single man working, it should never be allowed, but like Rough Tor says, on todays railway it is down to money. I personally do not rate todays railway at all and have very little to do with it, but someone can be working in a factory one day and six months "down the line" can be driving trains at 100mph, that just cannot be right and no one will convince me differently.
Yes bring back the second man, absolutely. But that is why I do not have much to do with preserved railways either,because the Railway was /is my life, but I used to be a member of a Heritage railway and I used to go there and I had people who had never worked on the railway, they were office workers, painters and decorators etc etc and they were trying to TELL ME how to do the job !I dont think so ! I spent my life as a proffesional railwayman so that went down like a "lead balloon" !
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