Jim, a younger man with broad shoulders and a layer of soot on his cheek, nodded. He slammed the firebox door shut and grabbed his shovel. "Flues are clogging up again. The draft is fighting me."
The steam locomotive, Number 402, was a beast of iron and coal, a snorting dragon that carved a black scar across the winter landscape. But for all her power, she had a voracious appetite and a dirty habit. boiler soot blower