Did railways in Britain have firemen training simulator the steam days?

[Gostav]

I found a interesting video about firemen training in Japan, the new firemen needed to practice coal throwing in the simulated base where had model fireboxes and tenders, is there had something similar in the steam days?
I think many heritage raillways in the UK also need one for save coal.

 

[30907]

Not that I've heard of. AFAIK they learnt on the job, starting with quite small locos, and historically there were different firebox designs needing different techniques. Do we have any firemen(or women) on the forum?

 

[Spartacus]

Nah, it was just a shed by shed thing, cleaners given experience with locos on shed and gradually moving on from there, there's a good explanation here: https://www.traindriver.org/historical-background.html#

Often it could take decades to move up the ranks, though a combination of WWII, modernisation and and increase in the number of well paid, clean jobs leading to lower numbers meant from the 40s onwards you could move up as far in a few short years as would have previously taken you most of your career.

 

[Harvester]

Often it could take decades to move up the ranks, though a combination of WWII, modernisation and and increase in the number of well paid, clean jobs leading to lower numbers meant from the 40s onwards you could move up as far in a few short years as would have previously taken you most of your career.

An example of this was at Nine Elms, where there was a serious recruiting problem towards the end of steam 1966/67. Some of the firemen working on Bulleid Pacifics, on mainline duties, were under 20 years old.