Why do people refer to an engineer as a driver and running a train as driving a train ?

[Anonymous]

Well, in my language the english words "drive, ride, and run" are same as the word "drive".
Exept when you talk about horses, then there is a separate word for ride, but we don't say ride a bike, because ride is only used for animals.

So, sometimes when I speak english associations about words come from my mother language, that's why I usually make a mistake and say drive a train.

But I don't think it makes much of a difference anyway, because you understand what I mean when I say drive a train.

[mackb4]

Oh a little funny thing to mention about this subject.After I got back from engine school in Nov of 1992,I got my wife and her best friend(which my wife's best friend is married to my best friend)on a good joke.They asked me "how do you steer those big trains ?"[}:)] I saw instant suckers. "Well I said,you see it's much easier now with these newer engines,they got power steering.On the old ones there's no power steering and it's much harder to turn that big wheel.And that's why they had fireman on the old steam engines,to help you know turn the wheel".They just looked at amazement at me that I had just let them in on something they had never known.Then I couldn't stand it any longer and had to tell them the truth.They weren't to happy ! But that's a true story [(-D][(-D] and will always laugh about it.

[daveklepper]

In the USA the term driver is never used by anyone knowledgable concerning the people "running" the train. He runs the train is the usual phrase, at least among laymen, and the person, man or woman, is called engineer. Sometimes, with rapid transit and other urban railway equipment, with electric operation, he is called the motorman. In two-man streetcar days and today with most subway trains, we hear of the motorman and the conductor, the latter opening and closing doors and in some cases collecting fares. With one man operation, which on streetcars means also collecting fares, the term operator is used, and some transit systems even now use this term for bus drivers, since they collect fares in addition to "driving" the bus.. In Great Britain? Can an Englishman, Scots, Welsh, or N. Irishman answer?

[mackb4]

I can understand that in good ole England and other parts of the world people refer an engineer as a driver of a train.Or they say the person is driving the train.I can't accept that .You drive a car,you ride a bike,but you run a train.I run the train with a throttle but I don't steer it like a car,or hold on to handle bars like riding a bike.So therfore you can't be a driver of a train.Sorry to step on some people's pride but what do you all think?[:p]