Paul C. Dietz

Firing on the Pennsy is Paul Dietz’s first-person account of working as a fireman on the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1943 and 1947. His home base was Crestline, Ohio which at that time was the site of a major Pennsylvania Railroad yard and shop complex that serviced every type of steam engine in the Pennsy system.

Dietz’s writing style is conversational in nature and he maintains a good balance between details pertaining to the railroad and personal events experienced, witnessed, and as related to him by someone else.

The “scaffolding” for his book is a chronological description of a typical day’s work. Dietz will describe a particular part of the days work and then segue into descriptions of other railroad events that are in some way related to the work described in the opening comments. For example, he talks about taking on water on the run that is part of his outline. This leads him to discussing the various ways the engines did get water – stopping at a water tower or taking it on the fly at a track pan, and this, in turn, leads into a discussion of the issues of water quality and how water samplers at Crestline, also called railroad nurses, would take water samples from the engines as they arrived and send the samples over to the lab for analysis.

I wouldn’t consider this book a must read but I think the author does a good job of giving the reader a sense of what it was like to fire steam engines in the mid-1940’s and I think it will hold the reader's interest. See Common Knowledge for an example of his writing style.

(Text Length – 97 pages. Includes 42 pictures) (Book Dimensions inches LxWxH – 7 x .375 x 10).… (plus d'informations)

Shortly after his 87th birthday Mr. Dietz decided to record some memories of his days firing locomotives for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The reader is rewarded by Firing on the Pennsy, a rich description of the work of a fireman and the technology of the steam locomotive. What enabled Mr. Dietz to create this remarkable record was the library of old time books that informed him of the details of each of his PRR working days more than half a century in the past. Each entry in the books contained the name of the train, the type and number of the engine, the name of the engineman, the pick-up point and destination of the train, the time he went off duty, the number of miles traveled, the hours he worked and the pay he earned for that tour of duty. These records helped evoke vivid memories of Mr. Dietz's experiences as a fireman on the Pennsy during the 1940s. In addition to revealing the sometimes monotonous, sometimes grueling, often exciting, and sometimes dangerous work of the fireman, Mr. Dietz also provides much information and insight regarding the equipment that he worked with, including the Westinghouse air brake, locomotive boilers, the Johnson bar (reverse lever), stokers, scooping water, and other information about steam locomotives and the operation of the PRR. Mr. Dietz hired out in 1943 in Canton, Ohio and worked mostly out of Crestline, Ohio, which was the terminal point between the Eastern Division and the Fort Wayne Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. In this book he recounts experiences and information about hostling and firing on pusher services, through freights, local freights, passenger runs, and in the yard. He also describes in detail the responsibilities of the fireman, along with some insight into the responsibilities of the engineman, and other train crew members. In addition, he recounts detailed experiences of selected work days or runs and gives the reader a feel for what the life of a fireman was like. I really enjoyed this book. I believe it compares favorably with the much longer and more developed “Set up Running” by John W. Orr. I highly recommend both the Dietz and Orr titles.… (plus d'informations)