The firebox door of Steam Shovel Zero-One swung open with a heavy iron clatter, bathing the frosty cab in yellow glare.
Master Borin shoveled in three scoops of hard coal. His bare arms shone with sweat despite the freezing mountain air.
The draft roared through the fire-tubes. On the brass Bourdon gauge beside the throttle bench, the needle crept steadily past eighty pounds, passed one hundred. Then he settled at one hundred and forty pounds of pressure.
Giles Croft stood on the timber running deck, his hand resting lightly on the two polished oak levers that controlled the main hoisting engine.
Behind him in the cab, the twin eight-by-ten-inch steam cylinders ticked softly as hot cooled water drained from the petcocks. The smell of hot metal tube oil and wet steam filled the narrow space.
“Steam pressure stable at one-forty,” Giles announced. “Safety valve chattering at one-fifty. Drum friction band adjusted. Master Duncan, are your powder holes fired?”
Down in the cut, sixty yards ahead, Duncan Stone-Splitter raised an orange warning flag from behind a heavy timber barricade.
“Three benches blasted down, Lord Giles!” Duncan shouted through cupped hands. “Ten powder holes fired at dawn! The lower face is shattered into five hundred tons of loose dark rock blocks!”
