Fatfox9's Blog

Location: Rhodesia Railways Mechanical Workshops, Bulawayo

Still in the Erecting Shop, 1973

I would like you to meet my Erecting Shop Journeyman.

His name was Brian Kelly and he came from Ireland.  I am convinced he was an IRA hit man but this was probably my overactive imagination at work, but he did strike me as a dark horse whose passive and quite nature merely concealed his other side.

Brian was a great guy, spoke with a wonderful Irish accent (obviously) and we got on really well although I made a number of serious fuck-ups while I was with him.  We will not discuss them at this time.

The ten o’clock tea-time was reserved for playing bridge in the Erecting Shop welding cubicle.  We had our own little hide away where our wooden lockers were.  Brian spent many frustrating months teaching me the game.  He had a lot of patience with me and I think I got the hang of it in the end although I still don’t really know what “vulnerable” and “rubber”means.  Anyway during tea time we used to sit around a steel table we had made and four of us would drift away into a make believe world of soft carpets, cigar smoke, and waiters dressed like penguins.  We really were a quartet of grand gentlemen in our oily, sooty overalls, greasy safety boots and chipped tin mugs that burned ones lips whenever a sip of tea was taken.

Brian’s wife also made the nicest mince sandwiches which I used to readily devour, normally not having anything of my own.

One of the jobs I was taught by Brian was a boiler tube replacement.  This was a bitch of a job and involved first the cutting out and then the welding back of up to 400 tubes that form the steam making heart of a steam locomotive.  The idea was that once the boiler was safely on its stands, the welder, in this case me, would climb inside the firebox and cut the old tubes out using an electric arc.  Quite a mission as you have to get the arc inside each tube to cut it out and the arc would flash all over the place.  If you have never welded electrically you wont understand what I am talking about but try to imagine it anyway.  Once they were all out the boilermakers would come and clean everything up and new tubes would be fitted which I then had to weld back in.  A long and back-breaking process, done in isolation and under a strict time scale.  Once all the welding was finished the boiler tubes were pumped up using water pressure so you could see any leaks in your welding.  And then it was back in again to seal off any water spurts.

In have to say here that I was complimented by Jack Crilly on my ability to carry out positional welding much better than the easier and normal flat welding.  This is quite strange as positional welding means upside down or vertical up/down welding and normally takes ages to master.  I got it right within a year and found it quite an accomplishment.  Boiler tube welding was all positional stuff and tested a welder to the limit both physically and technically.

I have never been a small lad.  In fact I am what you would call over average in build…..overweight or fat actually.  I was known as the little fat fucker in the workshops.  Getting into the boiler was always fun and getting out even more fun as a persons body expands when hot….I jest not with you here.  And it is really hot inside a boiler that is being welded.  The sweat literally pisses off of you.  Remember you are wearing elbow length fireproof gloves, your Jack the Ripper apron, boots, spats and your overall.  Oh yes and you have a welding helmet and cap on as well.  The cap was to stop any welding sparks burning the shit out of your exposed head which resulted in intense pinpoint pain, swearing, and the sickening smell of your own hair and flesh on fire.

If you do not manage to get your kit on correctly, some sparks do manage to get inside your overalls and I had one rather painful experience of a blob of molten metal coming into contact with the side of my dick….I have the scar to this day.  Lucky, lucky.

Sometimes blobs of metal got inside my boots….very painful too and you just have to grin bravely, swear, jump about, and wait for the bit of metal to cool down while being in direct contact with your skin.  There is no way to get your laced-up boots off.

As in the wagon shop there was also a graveyard for weary locomotives…..those fire breathing monsters that have come to the end of the line.  This was also a sad place where once proud giants of the railroad found their final resting place…..out in the open and unprotected from the elements.

It was an undignified end for these truly wonderfully majestic machines, and my love of and fascination for steam locomotives remains with me to this day.

Rhodesia Railways 20th Class Garrett hauling a passenger train.....what a majestic beast! There is a more than even chance I worked on this grand old lady.

Rhodesia Railways locomotive graveyard, Bulawayo

Inside a locomotive boiler showing steam tubes

Boiler tube plate where I would cut out and weld back the tubes

Inside a boiler