Where is that Mike Rowe guy when you need him? Seriously, after all of the photogenic operations are done for the day, there are a lot of mundane and rather dirty jobs that steam locomotive crews must peform to keep their machinery functioning properly. One such job is cleaning the smokebox. The spark arrestor screens inside the smokebox capture a lot of cinders during a full day of operation. In order to prevent this accumulation from impeding the flow of exhaust gasses, crewmembers typically open the front door, blow the soot off the screens and shovel out the cinders. In this shot, the Fireman on Moore-Keppel Co. #3 pitches one of several large shovel loads of "engine pooh" onto the tracks below.
Scenes depicting steam operations on the old C&O Greenbrier Division between Cass and Durbin, WV, featuring Moore-Keppel Climax #3 and Meadow River Heisler #6.
