This is a real corker.
Back when I used to do health and training, I specialised in People Moving Loads, renaming this as Shifting Stuff Safely. Seemed to fit the bill more neatly. I’d get audience member to show me how they’d do it now. Don’t actually do it just pantomime it.
‘Why do you do it that way?’
‘Oh, we’ve always done it that way.’ In my head, this was known as WADITWA.
You and your mates all need a little talk.’
By far the most common erroneous justification for poor, often flat out dangerous, working practices, WADITWA. Looks like a bad lay at Boggle, doesn’t?
WADITWA was the direct cause of one of the most blindly stupid ways of operating ever. It was so dangerous it caused the train companies to simply ignore it completely. ‘Nope, no problem here. Nobody died. Leave it.’
America was nailed together, spiked together, by the railroads. You’ve all seen images or videos like these.
Enormous engines, yes, often TWO, with cowcatcher front ends, massive spark arrester funnels dragging fuel to the mahoosive growth in heavy industry, very heavy industry indeed. Huge trains of mineral cars, all loaded to the brim with this tuff, the original Black Gold. Half mile long full of the stuff. The Appalachians were chockful of the coal and the rugged miners to dig it out.
Here’s the WADIT WA. Train engines had always been woodfired, so the practice dragged on. Trees were happy to grow like weeds in the Appalachians with a bit of encouragement. You had trains of a zillion tons of coal worth a trizillion dollars in industrial production being hauled by a logfire in a barely modified cave with wheels. I might have gone for square ones for a bit of authenticity.
You need extra rolling stock. Wood isn’t very calorific. You need two or three tenders to carry it all. You then need more firemen/stokers. Moving low energy-dense fuel to feed the Energy Monster at the front. You’re gonna have to stop to refuel three tenders at some point, whereas a single, smaller tender will get you there in one go, change crew, off you go again. Toot! Toot! No sparks to speak of, either, and the embers don’t spread so easily, so you can cut down on expensive firewardens. Makes no sense. How did they get there, and why did they stay there?
PS. A friend of mine and I were mucking about one day in the band practice room in his house. We discovered you can sing and play the words to the Ramones I just wanna sniff some glue to the theme music for Thomas the Tank Engine. And Stab Your Back! by The Damned. Hey, it’s steam engine related.
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