![]() The Automatic Air Brake, Anoter Important Invention Native whites and northern and western Europeans dominated the skilled and semi-skilled trades.įollowing the anti-Chinese campaigns and the passage of a series of laws restricting Chinese immigration in the 1880's, they also dominated the unskilled section construction sectors until the mid-1890's." More Reading. ![]() " Between the completion of the first transcontinental link in 1883 (1869) and the early days of the New Deal, the Union Pacific, Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and Milwaukee roads all recruited laborers from widely divergent origins. Such diverse backgrounds often led to confrontations among the workers, all of whom were subsequently looked down upon by their foreman and other higher-ups. With heritages ranging from Africans and Mexicans to Irish and Chinese, a virtual melting pot of cultures could be found out along the right-of-way. This led to many immigrants or former slaves being employed to not only maintain the tracks but also help grade and lay new lines under construction. It was the lowest paid profession in the field but nevertheless drew tens of thousands looking for any way to put food on the table. Since the railroad industry took its first uncertain steps during the 1820's, leading to the Baltimore & Ohio's chartering in 1827, virtually all track maintenance was performed by manual labor for the next century. Without these machines (such as should cleaners, ditch cleaners, undercutters, surface machines, ballast regulators, spike inserters/pullers, tampers, tie cranes, and rail grinders) it would otherwise be nearly impossible to do so! Instead, they utilize expensive, heavy, computerized equipment to greatly speed up the process in maintaining our country's thousands of miles of rail lines. Today, "gandy dancers" are still employed although they rarely carry manual tools like tie-tongs, tamping bars, claw bars, picks, shovels, lining bar, rail tongs, or other related devices. Officially, these employees were referred to as section hands and performed any task which related to track such as laying/spreading/tamping ballast, replacing rail, hammering spikes, placing tie-plats, setting ties. The expression was slang although its actual etymology is not known. During the era before mechanized maintenance, railroads employed armies of workers to keep their rights-of-way ready for service. ![]() The gandy dancer term has blossomed into folklore over the years, celebrated in several songs, books, and other mainstream mediums.ĭespite its near mythical status it described a once very common job on the railroad, hard labor.
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