there's
wonderful improvements in engines since the last great Exhibition. Some
of them take up their water without stopping. That's a wonderful
invention, and yet as simple as A B C. There are water-troughs at
certain places, lying between the rails. By moving a lever you let down
the mouth of a scoop into the water, and as you rush along the water is
forced into the tank, at the rate of three thousand gallons a minute.

"A engine-driver's chief anxiety is to keep time; that's what he thinks
most of. When I was driving the Brighton express, I always felt like as
if I was riding a race against time. I had no fear of the pace; what I
feared was losing way, and not getting in to the minute. We have to give
in an account of our time when we arrive. The company provides us with
watches, and we go by them. Before starting on a journey, we pass
through a room to be inspected. That's to see if we are sober. But they
don't say nothing to us, and a man who was a little gone might pass easy.
I've known a stoker that had passed the inspection, come on to the engine
as drunk as a fly, flop down among the coals, and sleep there like a log
for the whole run. I had to be my own stoker then. If you ask me if
engine-drivers are drinking men, I must answer you that they are pretty
well. It's trying work; one half of you cold as ice; t'other half hot as
fire; wet one minute, dry the next. If ever a man had an excuse for
drinking, that man's a engine-driver. And yet I don't know if ever a
driver goes upon his engine drunk. If he was to, the wind would soon
sober him.

"I believe engine-drivers, as a body, are the healthiest fellows alive;
but they don't live long. The cause of that, I believe to be the cold
food, and the shaking. By the cold food, I mean that a engine-driver
never gets his meals comfortable. He's never at home to his dinner.
When he starts away the first thing in the morning, he takes a bit of
cold meat and a piece of bread with him for his dinner; and generally he
has to eat it in the shed, for he mustn't leave his engine. You can
understand how the jolting and shaking knocks a man up, after a bit. The
insurance companies won't take us at ordinary rates. We're obliged to be
Foresters, or Old Friends, or that sort of thing, where they ain't so
particular. The wages of a engine-driver average about eight shillings a
day, but if he's a good schemer with his coals--yes, I mean if he
economises his co