Recounting the work needed to run steam engines in Kindersley

Ron Lamont was a long-time Kindersley resident who worked on the railroad and shared this memory of two steam engines arriving back at the shop track in Kindersley after snowplow runs. They had already been fuelled with coal and were waiting under the water tower to take on water.

Two steam engines arrive back at the shop track in Kindersley after snowplow runs. Photo supplied by Ron Lamont

The shop track is where the engineers and firemen would leave and pick up their engines. The firemen were the men who kept the coal moving to run the engines. There was another position on the railway called the hostler.

The hostler was an engineer who was responsible for the engines on the shop track. He had to make sure they kept running and ensure their fires didn’t burn down too much. He was also responsible for driving the engines onto the turntable and in and out of the roundhouse.

During heavy snowfall, shovelers rode in a wooden bunk car that was heated with a coal-fired pot-bellied stove. When the train got stuck in the snow, the shovelers would clear snow away from the steam engine and snowplow until it could back out of the snowdrift. The men were paid 65 cents an hour, and some trips took two or three days.

Sometimes two steam engines would be sent, with the second engine following the train. Once the front engine and plow were free from the snow, the back engine would try to pull them backward to free them from the drift.