traction engines. You will find a poor engineer very willing to talk.
This is bad habit number one. He cannot talk and have his mind on his
work. Beginners must not forget this. When I tell you how to fire an
engine you will understand how important it is, The poor engineer is
very apt to ask an outsider to stay at his engine while he goes to the
separator to talk. This is bad habit number two. Even if the outsider
is a good engineer, he does not know whether the pump is throwing more
water than is being used or whether it is throwing less. He can only
ascertain this by watching the column of water in the glass, and he
hardly knows whether to throw in fuel or not. He don't want the steam
to go down and he don't know at what pressure the pop valve will blow
off. There may be a box or journal that has been giving the engineer
trouble and the outsider knows nothing about it. There are a dozen
other good reasons why bad habit number two is very bad.

If you will watch the poor engineer when he stops his engine, he will,
if he does anything, pick up a wrench, go around to the wrist pin,
strike the key a little crack, draw a nut or peck away at something
else, and can't see anything for grease and dirt. When he starts up, ten
to one the wrist pin heats and he stops and loosens it up and then it
knocks. Now if he had picked up a rag instead of a wrench, he would not
have hit that key but he would have run his hand over it and if he had
found it all right, he would have let it alone, and would have gone over
the balance of the engine and when he started up again his engine would
have looked better for the wiping it got and would have run just as well
as before he stopped it. Now you will understand why a good engineer
wears out more rags than wrenches, while a poor one wears out more
wrenches than rags. Never bother an engine until it bothers you. If
you do, you will make lots of grief for yourself.