The climb aboard the engine is like a step back in time for Skip Shimko.
The Lancaster County man can picture in his mind what it must have been like coping with extremes.
On one side, there was the firebox glowing white hot around the hatch where the fireman fed coal into the machine.
On the other side, the lash of winter where the engineer poked his head out the cab window, his eyes peering into the night for any sign of a signal up ahead along the tracks.
“That part of you is getting hammered by the elements,” Shimko said. “This part of you is sweating.”
The whole time, the engineer works the throttle, the brakes, the lever set on forward or reverse, while the fireman stokes the flames that heat the water that keep up the pressure within the boiler.
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With just five years in, Shimko is still new to the lost art of driving a steam locomotive. Old-timers call him the Brat, while he prefers the title Eager Beaver.
“I’m the new guy on the block,” he said, “My great-grandfather was an engineer with the Pennsylvania Railroad. I’ve been interested in trains since I’ve been able to crawl.”
But Shimko didn’t really learn about trains until he joined the Williams Grove Historical Steam Engine Association where volunteers with decades of experience offered him hands-on training on Engine 643. Built in June 1901, the locomotive is celebrating its 120th birthday this weekend.
A thing alive
“The fellows here are very knowledgeable about what’s going on and how it works,” Shimko said. “A lot of guys cut their teeth here.” Some have advanced to paying jobs with the Strasburg Railroad, Norfolk Southern and Amtrak.
A common thread among them is a love for being in the heart of the machine as the train surges forward.
“It’s almost as if it’s alive and you’re controlling it,” Shimko said. “It’s not like a car. You can feel what it’s doing. You can put your hands on it. You can hear the sound of it. ... The cadence of the steam exhaust.”
In a way, Engine 643 is a beast that breathes fire. Shimko noted how much of the boiler just sits on the drive assembly. There is only one rigid connection. This design allows the boiler to expand and contract, almost like a lung, as the locomotive eats coal and drinks water.
Bill Medlin caught the bug 60 years ago when he was just a teenager. “When you’re running the machine, it’s talking to you. A vibration here, a little squeak there,” he said. “Maybe you don’t notice it in your ears, but you’re feeling it on your skin. You’re feeling it on the seat of your pants.”
Do the loco-motion
At a minimum, Engine 643 requires a crew of two to operate.
“The engineer is the driver, the boss on the engine,” Medlin said. “He makes it stop. He makes it go.”
The fireman is responsible for maintaining the flames within the firebox that generate steam by heating water within the boiler. Steam pressure produces the energy the drives the locomotive.
“We like to run it at about 170 pounds per square inch and keep it there if we can,” Shimko said. “That’s a good pressure. As you run, water evaporates. You have to put water in. You have to know when and how much to put in.”
Both crewmen are responsible for monitoring the water level within the boiler by keeping an eye on the two glass gauges mounted on either side of the firebox housing.
If the water falls below a certain level, the boiler could overheat and explode. There are levers handy to activate an injector system that draws water from a tank in the tender through hoses and valves under the cab floor that connect directly to the boiler. At the same time, the fireman has to monitor the rate of fuel consumption.
“Some coal goes up like flash paper,” Shimko said. “Some coal gives you a nice fire. It’s something you learn over time.”
The coal the association uses is trucked in from West Virginia. “We tried Pennsylvania soft coal, but it won’t burn in our engine,” Medlin said. “She likes the good stuff.”
As the engine is in motion, crewmen keep watch over the color of the smoke rising out of the stack. The coal can produce a film of soot that can act as an insulator that impacts heat transfer.
Crewmen have oil cans ready to use during a run. Wear and tear can cause a locomotive to make ugly sounds.
“We don’t want to get anywhere near that point,” Medlin said. “You put a drip here, a drop there, to keep it lubricated. A lot of people criticize us. They say we put too much oil on that engine. I say lots of oil, less maintenance.”
For the most part, Engine 643 is not all that fussy.
“Anything gooey, sticky or slimy is good enough with one exception,” Medlin said. “You have to have the right oil to feed into the [drive] cylinders.”
In the old days, firemen poured a cup of melted beef tallow into the proper receptacle. Steam vaporizes the rendered animal fat leaving a residue that coats the inside of the machinery.
The tallow the association used came in a can. It was green, rancid and stank, but it worked beautifully, Medlin said. “But no one is making it anymore.”
Instead, the association has to make do with a petroleum-based product that works, but is not as good as tallow.
Start up, cool-down
What it lacks in a name, it makes up for in personality. Fact is, Engine 643 can be stubborn at times. Any number of variables can cause it to hesitate, forcing the association to turn to its diesel engine to allow for train rides on special occasions.
It helps if the fireman on duty is privy to the running style of the engineer at the controls.
“Some guys run this thing like we’re hauling nitroglycerin,” Shimko said. “They don’t like to run it that hard. They just baby it.” This creates challenges for the fireman trying to maintain a steady pressure.
Years ago, the association offered classes on how to run the engine. Every so often, women enrolled in the program.
“We discovered that the girls do a better job than the boys,” Medlin said. “The boys want to run all-cannonball-shot-out-of-hell while the women were more respectful of the big machine.”
One day, a little boy and girl sat across from their mother cheering their parent on as she drove the train down the tracks. That program has since been discontinued.
Part of the reason was for boiler and mechanical problems. The other issue is one of timing. It takes a train crew about five hours to get the engine ready for a run.
“By that time, they want to run it themselves,” Medlin said. “They don’t want someone else having all the fun.”
Start-up is gradual, a balancing act between adding coal and water to build up enough pressure to drive the mechanism. Cool-down is just as slow and steady to avoid putting stress on an engine that has been in operation for over a century.
“A lot of people think it’s like playing train,” Shimko said. “That’s not the case. It’s a heavy workout. By the end of the day, you’re so full of soot, you look like you worked in a coal mine.”
Every year after Labor Day, crewmen drain all the water from the boiler to dry out the inside of the cylinder out so that the metal doesn’t freeze during the winter, Medlin said.
One volunteer in a hazmat suit and respirator crawls inside the engine to hose down the boiler, vacuum up the dirt and treat any rust spots in the metal. Even the cleanest water when boiled leaves behind dissolved mineral deposits.
Check out photos of the steam engine:
