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Sure I was cocky! I thought I was quite a kid. Long before our trains were equipped with air brakes, I had made myself understand how this Westinghouse contrivance worked and how to put it on an engine; my information came from the Westinghouse Company.

For compressing air there was a steam-driven air pump on the locomotive, and a reservoir, either on the tender or the engine, in which the compressed air was kept under pressure. The tender and each car had a cylinder and piston and a triple valve underneath its body; the piston being connected to the brake levers. Each car had a pipe extending along its bottom, and this was connected to the brake cylinder. I understood it long before the Union Pacific determined to equip its trains with this improvement. Consequently, when we did get air brakes, I got the job of putting them on the division locomotives. That was in the last year of my apprenticeship, I was getting fifteen cents an hour, but I was getting extra for examining firemen who wanted to be promoted to be engineers. They had a car rigged up with all the air-brake equipment. As I would show a fireman how it worked, I'd be thinking to myself: "What the hell do I want to stay around here for? With what I know, I could get a job in China!"