Talk:Fireman (steam engine)

message: I am a fireman on the Corris Railway in the UK. I have never heard of a fireman on a locomotive referred to as a boilerman in my life! If no-one has any objections, I'd like to change the wording somewhat ...  Cheers Witchwooder (talk) 12:39, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I have never had anything to do with operating trains, but I've read a helluvalotta railway books, the majority of them British, and I've never heard of a "boilerman" either.  I've added a "citation needed" tag, but really this is too weak.  The article needs to be retitled.  It also needs to acknowledge the term "stoker". 208.76.104.133 (talk) 01:03, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I've re-titled it - I'll check to make sure there are no dropped or recursive links. Witchwooder (talk) 08:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fireman/Boilerman 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I got to this article from the Stoker dab page, via a redirect from the Stoker (occupation) link on that page. I think naming this article "Fireman (steam engine)" is a BIG mistake. A fireman on a steam engine is only one of several jobs done by a stoker. Coal-fired boilers that heat buildings are loaded by stokers (I watched my father load the one in his mother's basement 60+ years ago when I was a child, and I am SURE such heating systems have not become totally extinct worldwide during my lifetime), where only heat is being produced: no engine of any kind is being powered there. Watch the wonderful Russian movie The Island, in which Anatoly is working off his guilt as a stoker in a remote, far-northern monastery in the late 1970s; there's no steam engine there either. (Adding a link to "stoker" in that article is what brought me here.)
Renaming this article "Stoker (occupation)"—or something equally or even more inclusive—would make it much more relevant, useful and (most important) accurate than "Fireman (steam engine)", the inappropriately restrictive title it has now. An acceptable alternative would be to create a separate "Stoker (occupation)" article, but that seems unnecessary for an occupation that's rapidly vanishing in ALL of its contexts and unlikely to be revived. —104.244.192.66 (talk) 02:21, 15 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should be renamed "Stoker (occupation)" 

message: Afaik, a union (or unions) in the 1950ies had enforced that firemen also "worked" on trains that were not driven by coal. 
M. Thatcher abolished that rule in the eighties (1982 ?). --Neun-x (talk) 14:41, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: With the switch from steam to diesel and electric traction, the post of "fireman" was renamed "secondman". On diesel-hauled passenger trains where the coaches were steam-heated, one of the secondman's duties was to attend to the train heating boiler. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Margaret Thatcher]] 

message: I'm proposing to remove references to Watertenders from this article.  A watertender is not a stoker, he is instead responsible for pumps, evaporators, condensers, and other apparatus relating to boiler feedwater (hence the name), as well as supervision of the stokers and coal passers.  The US Navy used the term "fireman" (1st, 2nd, and 3rd class) for stokers.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:589:300:CA70:0:0:0:E438 (talk) 21:34, 22 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of Watertender