For the children of remote Newfoundland rail settlements, education came under the power of steam.

"How long would you cook potatoes?" It wasn't a typical question for a prospective teacher, but hiring for a travelling school involved more than finding someone able to teach all grades.

It meant finding a person willing to spend 10 months of the year in a railway car in remote locations, a person who could fix things when they went wrong, keep a fire going, and cook and clean.

The response must have been acceptable because Frank Moores became the first teacher in the School Car, a travelling classroom for children in isolated rural communities of Newfoundland during the late 1930s and early '40s.

"He was industrious," says Randy Noseworthy, author of a book entitled The School Car, who met Moores-having the same name as a future Newfoundland Premier-on several occasions. "He seemed to be a pretty independent thinker, resourceful and willing to tackle any sort of challenge he could find."

Each morning, Moores, dressed in a shirt and tie, would shake a small bell and children would pile into the railcar. Classes began around 9 a.m. and ended around 4 p.m., taught in regular one-room schoolhouse fashion, and the curriculum was the same as that of schools in St. John's. In a country where school attendance was voluntary, Moores once recalled that all the children attended his classes.

Railway and forestry workers had settled small remote communities after the construction of the railway in 1881 and the expansion of the timber industry in the early 1900s. These settlements had few government services and the children had no prior form of schooling.

By the early 1930s, that lack of schooling worried those in power. The public debt had soared with the First World War, and by 1932 Newfoundland faced bankruptcy. A commission set up to find ways to avoid this recommended that Newfoundland temporarily allow Britain to run the country through an appointed commission. Further, its report stressed the importance of education in overcoming Newfoundland's economic troubles, to "better equip the average boy and girl for the avenues of employment likely to be available to them on the Island." In February 1934, Responsible Government was suspended and the Commission of Government took office.

"There are obvious physical difficulties in educating a people living in isolation…." the St. John's Evening Telegram reported in January 1935. "Whatever the difficulties, Commission Government will fail in its task and will deserve to fail, if it cannot raise substantially the general level of education on this island."

It was in this climate of reform that, during the summer of 1936, the School Car was instituted, with a teacher and materials from the Newfoundland Department of Education, a railcar from the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, and a maintained route from the Newfoundland Railway.

In mid October 1936, Frank Moores-fresh out of college-set off for Gaff Topsail, the first stopover for the School Car. The car would seat about 20 students and also act as Moores' living quarters, with a kitchen and dining room, and a makeshift bunk on a pair of seats.

The travelling school proved to be a hit from the very beginning, with nine students attending opening day-despite a blizzard. For the next six years, the School Car travelled the rails providing school services to 13 communities, though not all were served each year.

The school served mostly primary and elementary students, with texts for Grades 1 to 8, but Moores taught everyone who came along. "All ages, all grades, all denomin-ations…all everything," he recalled.

One of those students was Dominic Lynch from Arnold's Cove Station. Lynch used to walk six miles every day to attend the small school in Arnold's Cove, but he outgrew the grades there. When the School Car came along, Moores accepted the older student in his classroom, seeing him through to the end of high school.

"He really liked the teacher," recalls his son, also Dominic Lynch. "I never heard him say anything negative about the whole thing." Randy Noseworthy says Moores was well liked and respected by everyone in the communities: "He ate meals in their homes, he went with the men hunting."

Prior to the 1939-40 school year, officials at the Department of Education decided to change the School Car's curriculum: with just one teacher for all the communities, the time passing between days of schooling was too long. The solution was to adopt correspondence courses-the School Car "could act as the connecting link between the people and the Department." During the visits, the teacher would instruct children in the correspondence work and then give directions to an adult in the community, who would supervise the work in his absence. Once the lessons were completed, they were sent to the Department of Education in St. John's for marking.

This change in schooling led to the hiring of a second teacher, Alphonsus Pittman, who took over the day-to-day instruction while Moores spent his time travelling along the rail line to establish the correspondence work. By May 1940, Moores worked with more than 16 communities, co-ordinating a large part of education in the countryside.

In June 1941, Moores left teaching for more profitable work in constructing the Newfoundland Airport (at Gander). The following September the School Car set off once again, this time with just one teacher, Bill Bishop.

It turned out to be its final year. Though no one seems to know why the service stopped, it was likely a combination of factors, including rising wartime demands on the Newfoundland Railway and the construction of more schoolhouses across the island.

Despite lasting only six years, the School Car contributed significantly to raising the level of education in rural Newfoundland. A Department of Education report declared, "the progress made by the children attending has, in many cases, been remarkable. A few who attended during the school year…moved with their parents to centres operating regular schools and are reported as having secured the necessary groundwork to enable them to carry on their present school work successfully."

For Dominic Lynch, the School Car allowed him to complete Grade 11, an extraordinary accomplishment in rural Newfoundland at that time. He spent the next 42 years with the Newfoundland Railway, the company that helped make his education possible.