“Dad”

(By “Mac.”)

Everyone knows him as “Dad.” That's the sort of fellow he is. In years an old man, but in spirit—well, ask those who go “first footing” when “Dad” goes the rounds. “Dad” does most things well. He is a tip-top gardener, plays a useful game of bowls, and can talk intelligently on most subjects from politics to wrestling. In one respect, however, he is peculiar; he hates railways! “Forty years in the service,” he says, “are enough for any man. Started cleaning and finished in charge at —–, and when I retired I finished.”

Yet “Dad” is a “steam” man. When a salesman tried to persuade him to trade-in his excellent, though old radio set, “Dad” crushed him by remarking: “What do I want with one of your new superheated arrangements?” Then he takes a pride in his treatment of his hot-water service. He demonstrates his ability to make a hot fire with a minimum of fuel, and how to keep the hot water supply at top peak. One night something went wrong and boiling water ran from an overflow in the roof where, according to all the laws of plumbing, only cold water should be. The proper vent was temporarily blocked, but “Dad” reckoned it was either a “vacuum” or excess pressure. He was setting to work with a spanner and a pipe wrench to remedy the trouble when better counsels prevailed and he called in a plumber. “What can a plumber do?” he argued. “In my day a man had to do his own repairs, and get his train home.” “Anyway, surely the safety valve should be dependable. The outfit should have a gauge so that a man could tell what pressure he was carrying.”

And he hates railways! He says this, and shortly after is telling a yarn about “that ‘D’ we had when I was firing to a Welsh fellow on the branch,” or, “that ‘U’ I had when I was running express trains on the plains. A tricky engine if you didn't know her, but good. Bit small in the boiler for the job, still—–.” He yarns of the “good old days” when men often spent twenty hours on end on the footplate; of nights of fog and storm, when your straining eyes sought substance in the shadows ahead. Or perhaps he has something amusing to tell of the days before the “Westinghouse,” when a man running late took a risk in pulling up on a greasy rail, and then backed up to the station. Perhaps he'll tell of a mate, fire-blind, not seeing that cow at the side of the track, “Lucky we didn't leave the road;” “She was a brand-new compound, and the main bearing—–.” So this man who hates railways yarns on. You ride in the cabs of express engines now scrapped; you roll along the plains with a “goods” on a moonlit morning, with your mate silent at his window, and the engine beating a “clickety-click, clickety-click” on the track beneath you. You “get there on time,” and all through it you feel this fine old man's pride in his craft.

And you sense a “something” you cannot define. “Devotion to duty” is too high sounding, for it is part of the job to the men who ride in the cabs; the best written rule book cannot guarantee it. There is nothing heroic about it; it is the simple tradition which decrees that a man must get his train “there,” on time, in safety.