Maurice sent this to me to be put up on the memory pages of the Railraods of Madison County site and to be posted here after I did my editor thing to it. Track Maintenance Before trucks and other mobile equipment used today to maintain the tracks everything was pretty much done by hand. On the Michigan Division, Elkhart, In. - Louisville, Ky., each maintenance section was about fourteen to fifteen miles long. Each section had three to four men year round. In summer they would have extra gangs that retied and surfaced the track. Crossties and ballast were handled by work trains. Motor cars were used for mobility and to carry tools. These motor cars would carry six to seven men. The tools carried would allow you to do most repair jobs. As a rule these were the tools they carried on this division. 4 lining bars, used as jack handles, to line track and hold ties against the rail while driving spikes and other uses, 2 claw bars, used to pull spikes and hold up ties for spiking, 2 or 3 track wrenches, 3 or 4 shovels, 2 picks, 2 spike mauls, 1 pair of tie tongs used to move ties by two men or flipped over and used by one man, a few spikes and bolts, 2 small track jacks, 1 track level, 1 track gauge and 1 small blacksmith hammer. Of course most cars had a single shot Stevens Rifle for ground hogs and such. Also an axe and a device to pull spikes from between the stock rail and a guard rail. We have the motor car ready. We will look inside the car house. Its size is 12'X18'. Inside the car house there are extra tools of the kind on the motor car. These are speciality tools that were not used every day. A two man hand drill to drill holes in rail, a rail bender used to bend stock rail, a rail stretcher used to pull rail together if it would run due to temperature change or other reasons, mowing scythe handles and blades, brush axe and a roll of number 9 wire used for whatever, different lengths of 1/2" chain, a hand saw and a coal burning stove. On the wall behind the stove was a couple of pieces of number 9 wire about six inches long, shaped like an s, with a handle about six inches long. This was one of the most valuable pieces of equipment in the car house. It was used mostly in the winter. If you were at the car house at noon, fire going in the stove, you laid the s shaped wires on the stove, opened your lunch box, removed the fried bologna sandwich with maybe a slice of cheese and toasted your sandwich. If you have never eaten a sandwich toasted in this manner, after being in the cold for four hours, you have never lived. The next time I will explain how we used some of these tools. Some are almost a lost art. Also on the motor car was a couple of rail chisels. You can read how we operated on a line up at, RR of Madison County http://madisonrails.railfan.net/, under Fast Motor Cars. LEW
That's for sure a reminder of how tough that work was back in the days of real railroading. Everything was done by hand and nothing was easy. Think of how spoiled we have all become with all the automated tooling today.
About 25 years ago (+/-) Charles Kuralt did a 1/2 hour TV program following a Track Gang on the Mississippi Export Railroad. The Gang of 12 or so men was re-aligning a curve manually using the steel bars that Roger refered to. The men synchronized their actions to a song led by their Supervisor. It was amazing to see these men move fully installed and ballasted track at least a foot sideways solely by the strength of their arms and backs. If anyone knows how to locate that program, it would be very interesting to watch it again.
I remember that show and have been trying to get a copy of it for several years. I am definitely interested in a copy. It was fantastic watching them move the track. As I recall, they were retired shortly after the program was made. BTW - remember that Maurice wrote what I posted. I didn't.
Roger, I spent about an hour with Google this morning and could find nothing concerning MEX (Mississippi Export Railroad), Charles Kuralt, CBS, and On The Road. Tomorrow I will call MEX HQ (http://www.mserailroad.com/) in Moss Point, MS (40 miles east of here). If they have a copy, I'll ask if they will let me copy it. I'll let you know what the outcome is ... ?
