Railway Firemen
A fireman, stoker or boilerman is a person who tends the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox. On steam locomotives, the title ''fireman'' is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the title is usually ''stoker'' (although the British Merchant Navy did use ''fireman''). The German word ''Heizer'' is equivalent and in Dutch the word ''stoker'' is mostly used too. The United States Navy referred to them as ''watertenders''. Nautical Royal Navy The Royal Navy used the rank structure stoker 2nd class, stoker 1st Class, leading stoker, stoker petty officer and chief stoker. The non-substantive (trade) badge for stokers was a ship's propeller. "Stoker" remains the colloquial term for a marine engineering rating, despite the decommissioning of the last coal-fired naval v ...
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