[DSY011]

Hi Steve and welcome to the forum. I am also a an ex-fireman from the Rhodesian Railways (now Zambian and Zimbabwe railways) I used to fire Garratts, both hand fired and worm and steam jet fired. I spent most of my mainline working on the Dett Straight, which is 73 miles of dead straight track, although it did go up and down a bit. Not much fun for new people on the footplate when you could see an approaching trains 250 watt headlight coming towards you 73 miles away on single track working. I was glade to latter be posted to Umtali where there were 365 curves down to Portuguese East Africa. We did not have to do any firing as it was all deasil locos, but my driver and I took turns in driving. If he took it down, then I would take it up, then change around for the next trip. Still miss those days.