Swipin’ Coal: 1917

I live in Australia and steam locomotives ran the rails until the 1970's. In the mining village where I lived the last steam locomotive was retired in October 1967 and replaced by a diesel-hydraulic GE 44 tonner. As a young boy, I lived very close to the railroad tracks. My mum would send my brothers and me off with a metal bucket to pick up loose coal that fell from the locomotive tender as it went about its business. We were lucky though. The engineer, a chap named Laurie, was a family friend and sometimes he would stop and shovel coal into our buckets to save us some time. Great Photo! It brought back a good memory.

My father told us that he would look for coal along the tracks putting the finds into a burlap bag. This would have been around 1930 in the Wilson section of Clairton, PA.

My grandmother, who is 101, tells how she and her brother would go and collect coal that fell from the train, so they would have heat. Her father had abandoned the family and her mother did laundry to keep them alive. My grandmother said that sometimes the train folks even threw out coal on purpose for them.