Old Time Trains

Tracklaying
Detailed description from The Great Railway by Pierre Berton.

The organization was meticulous, down to the last railway spike. Each morning two construction trains set out from the supply yards, far in the rear, each loaded with the exact number of rails, ties, spikes, fishplates, and telegraph poles required for half a mile of railway. One train was held in reserve on a siding about six miles to the rear; the other moved directly to the front where the track-laying gang of three hundred men and seventy horses was waiting.

The tracklayers worked like a drill team. The ties were unloaded first, to be picked up by the waiting wagons -thirty ties to a wagon-hauled forward and dropped on both sides of rhe graded embankment for exactly half a mile. As the ties were thrown out, two men with marked rods laid them across the grade, exactly two feet apart. Behind the teams came a hand-truck loaded with rails, fishplates, and spikes. Six men marched on each side of it, and when they reached the far end of the last pair of newly laid rails, each crew seized a rail among them and threw it into exact position. Two more men gauged these two rails for alignment. Four more followed with spikes, placing one in each of the four ends of the rails. Four others screwed in the fishplates and another four followed with crowbars to raise the ties while the spikes were being hammered in, All worked in a kind of rhythm, each man directly opposite his partner on each separate rail. More men followed with hammers and spikes to make the rails secure, but by this time the hand-truck had already moved forward, passing over the newly laid rails before the job was complete.

As each construction train dumped its half-mile of supplies at End of Track, it moved back to the nearest siding to be replaced by the reserve train. There was no time lost. As the track unfolded, the boarding cars were nudged ahead constantly by the
construction train locomotive so that no energy would be wasted by the navvies in reaching their moving mess hails and dormitories. Right behind the track-laying gang came the telegraph teams, working so efficiently that one hour after the day's track was laid, End of Track was in telegraphic communication with the outside world.
The operation was strung out for hundreds of miles across the open prairie. Up ahead were the survey camps, followed by the grading gangs and the bridge-makers. Far to the rear were other thousands-saddlers and carpenters, cooks and tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, doctors, and provisioners. Supply trains moved out of Winnipeg on schedule, unloading thousands of tons of goods at yards established every hundred miles. Here the material was sorted daily into train lots and dispatched to the front. When the steel moved past the hundred-mile point the yards moved, too. An entire community of ofHcc workers, sorters, dispatchers, trainmen, labourers, and often their families as well, could be transported a hundred miles in a single night without the loss of an hour's work, because the houses were all portable and could be fitted easily onto flatcars.

Far our on the barren plains, miles to the west of End of Track, were the bridging reams, grading units, and surveyors, all driven forward by the knowledge that the tracklayers were pressing hard behind them. The head contractor had a flying wing of his own men standing by, prepared to complete immediately any work that seemed unlikely to be ready in time for the "ironing" of the track.

The grading was accomplished by immense scrapers pulled by teams of horses. Their task was to build an embankment for the railway four feet above the prairie and to ditch it for twenty yards on either side. At that height the rails would be protected from the blizzards of winter and costly delays from snow blockage would be avoided.

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Old Time Trains © 2009

Tracklaying
Detailed description from The Great Railway by Pierre Berton.

The organization was meticulous, down to the last railway spike. Each morning two construction trains set out from the supply yards, far in the rear, each loaded with the exact number of rails, ties, spikes, fishplates, and telegraph poles required for half a mile of railway. One train was held in reserve on a siding about six miles to the rear; the other moved directly to the front where the track-laying gang of three hundred men and seventy horses was waiting.

The tracklayers worked like a drill team. The ties were unloaded first, to be picked up by the waiting wagons -thirty ties to a wagon-hauled forward and dropped on both sides of rhe graded embankment for exactly half a mile. As the ties were thrown out, two men with marked rods laid them across the grade, exactly two feet apart. Behind the teams came a hand-truck loaded with rails, fishplates, and spikes. Six men marched on each side of it, and when they reached the far end of the last pair of newly laid rails, each crew seized a rail among them and threw it into exact position. Two more men gauged these two rails for alignment. Four more followed with spikes, placing one in each of the four ends of the rails. Four others screwed in the fishplates and another four followed with crowbars to raise the ties while the spikes were being hammered in, All worked in a kind of rhythm, each man directly opposite his partner on each separate rail. More men followed with hammers and spikes to make the rails secure, but by this time the hand-truck had already moved forward, passing over the newly laid rails before the job was complete.

As each construction train dumped its half-mile of supplies at End of Track, it moved back to the nearest siding to be replaced by the reserve train. There was no time lost. As the track unfolded, the boarding cars were nudged ahead constantly by the
construction train locomotive so that no energy would be wasted by the navvies in reaching their moving mess hails and dormitories. Right behind the track-laying gang came the telegraph teams, working so efficiently that one hour after the day's track was laid, End of Track was in telegraphic communication with the outside world.
The operation was strung out for hundreds of miles across the open prairie. Up ahead were the survey camps, followed by the grading gangs and the bridge-makers. Far to the rear were other thousands-saddlers and carpenters, cooks and tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, doctors, and provisioners. Supply trains moved out of Winnipeg on schedule, unloading thousands of tons of goods at yards established every hundred miles. Here the material was sorted daily into train lots and dispatched to the front. When the steel moved past the hundred-mile point the yards moved, too. An entire community of ofHcc workers, sorters, dispatchers, trainmen, labourers, and often their families as well, could be transported a hundred miles in a single night without the loss of an hour's work, because the houses were all portable and could be fitted easily onto flatcars.

Far our on the barren plains, miles to the west of End of Track, were the bridging reams, grading units, and surveyors, all driven forward by the knowledge that the tracklayers were pressing hard behind them. The head contractor had a flying wing of his own men standing by, prepared to complete immediately any work that seemed unlikely to be ready in time for the "ironing" of the track.

The grading was accomplished by immense scrapers pulled by teams of horses. Their task was to build an embankment for the railway four feet above the prairie and to ditch it for twenty yards on either side. At that height the rails would be protected from the blizzards of winter and costly delays from snow blockage would be avoided.