The trains were small because they had to fit in the hole but they could pull a big load. We had a locomotive called Big Bertha that could pull 30 full cars or more. Sometimes she would have so much weight to pull that the force of it would cause the tracks to spread and she would fall right in between the rails. It wasn't easy to get Bertha back on the tracks when she was wedged like that, but we had jacks and pry bars to help us put her back on.

I started in the mine when I was 24 years old and I started working as a trimmer making sure that each car had 2 tons of coal in it and such. I was doing that for 6 months when I got promoted to being a motorman and driving the locomotive! Sometimes it just worked that way; trimmer today, motorman tomorrow. The guy that was the regular motorman didn't show up for work one day and so the Pit Boss asked me if I wanted his job and I jumped at the chance.

There was no training or anything. I had to teach myself how to drive the locomotive but it wasn't too hard to learn. Besides, the previous motorman had let me play around on the controls so I knew a bit. I was sure excited though because I liked the trains and it was a lot easier on my fingers! As a trimmer I was always getting my fingers caught between the coal and full of splinters, I didn't have to worry about that when I was driving the locomotive. It was a nice job. That's how we got the men into the mine too.

The mine went into the hill about 4 km and so the men weren't going to walk in that far, they were going to hitch a ride. At the start of the shift they would pile into the empty coal cars and I would bring them down into the mine to where they would be working that day. We called this the 'mantrip' and we were only supposed to go 3 miles per hour. I know that 3 miles/hour isn't that fast, but for the safety of the men you had to take it easy.

Some of the men would try and get me to go faster because they wanted to get to work mining the coal. The more they mined, the more they got paid and sitting on the train for an hour and a half wasn't going to make them any money. Sometimes I would take it up to 5 miles and hour, but not more than that. You could get into big trouble if the mine inspector caught you.

Geez…I remember one time the mine inspector came and he got quite a ride. You never knew who the mine inspector was because he wore a mining helmet and carbide light just like all the other guys, but most of the time he would come into the mine with a company man. If he came with the company man you knew that there was a mine inspector on board and you took it easy.

Well, I remember one time Jakey was driving a powder trip and the mine inspector got on board. Men were never supposed to be transported on a powder trip! The powder trip was for the explosives! All that was supposed to be on board was the brakey, the motorman and the firebosses. The firebosses were the men that set the explosives in the mine and they liked to ride along and get their equipment ready. That day, the mine inspector thought that he was getting on board a mantrip.

Jakey must have thought that the mine inspector was just a new fireboss because as soon as everyone was aboard, Jakey took off like a canon through the tunnel! He had a "lead foot" and liked to go 15 to 20 miles per hour on the locomotive. Powder trips were supposed to be going at 3 miles per hour, but Jakey didn't care, he went as fast as he could.

Now, that poor mine inspector didn't quite know what hit him. He was hanging on to the edge of the coal car with white knuckles and the timbers of the roof were whizzing above him just inches from this head! They whipped down that dark tunnel like a roller coaster! And to top it all off, there were explosives under his feet!

By the time they got to the end of Jakey's run, the mine inspector was white as a ghost and shaking all over; he couldn't even speak! For sure Jakey got in trouble that day for giving the mine inspector such a wild ride. It was dangerous, but it sure was funny. We did it all the time, but it was a rare day when someone got caught, and that was Jakey's day.

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