“A engine-driver’s chief anxiety is to keep time; that’s what he thinks most of. When I was driving the Brighton express, I always felt like as if I was riding a race against time. I had no fear of the pace; what I feared was losing way, and not getting in to the minute. We have to give in an account of our time when we arrive. The company provides us with watches, and we go by them. Before starting on a journey, we pass through a room to be inspected. That’s to see if we are sober. But they don’t say nothing to us, and a man who was a little gone might pass easy. I’ve known a stoker that had passed the inspection, come on to the engine as drunk as a fly, flop down among the coals, and sleep there like a log for the whole run. I had to be my own stoker then. If you ask me if engine-drivers are drinking men, I must answer you that they are pretty well. It’s trying work; one half of you cold as ice; t’other half hot as fire; wet one minute, dry the next. If ever a man had an excuse for drinking, that man’s a engine-driver. And yet I don’t know if ever a driver goes upon his engine drunk. If he was to, the wind would soon sober him. “I believe engine-drivers, as a body, are the healthiest fellows alive; but they don’t live long. The cause of that, I believe to be the cold food, and the shaking. By the cold food, I mean that a engine-driver never gets his meals comfortable. He’s never at home to his dinner. When he starts away the first thing in the morning, he takes a bit of cold meat and a piece of bread with him for his dinner; and generally he has to eat it in the shed, for he mustn’t leave his engine. You can understand how the jolting and shaking knocks a man up, after a bit. The insurance companies won’t take us at ordinary rates. We’re obliged to be Foresters, or Old Friends, or that sort of thing, where they ain’t so particular. The wages of a engine-driver average about eight shillings a day, but if he’s a good schemer with his coals—yes, I mean if he economises his coals—he’s allowed so much more. Some will make from five to ten shillings a week that way. I don’t complain of the wages particular; but it’s hard lines for such as us, to have to pay income-tax. The company gives an account of all our wages, and we have to pay. It’s a shame.