The foreman fired fewer and fewer slackers each week. But even after the crew was slimmed down and stabilized, the paranoia of being fired for not working hard persisted. This led to rock throwing, which is detailed in "Rocks".

A large track repair project is managed by a Road Master who is responsible for the work to be done by the Extra Gang. An "Extra Gang" is a group of workers organized for a purpose. There were also the Section Gang who were in charge of all railroad repairs in a given territory. A big gang might be broken up into smaller functional units. The track we were repairing had many rotten ties it's hundred-odd mile length. It was so bad that the trains could not exceed ten miles per hour. Before the Extra Gang got going, our Road Master walked along the tracks and painted a large white dot on the rail above the ties he wanted us to replace. He did this with a small can of paint with a foam end in the shape of a dot attached to a stick.

The Extra Gang spread out into clumps of men performing specific tasks. In front the first year were the Sled Dogs. A winch on wheels clamped to the tracks wound up a wedge or sled placed under the track and ties. As the winch reeled in the thick steel cables, the sled, which spanned the width of the tracks and ties, cut underneath the ties and lifted both three feet in the air. Sled Dogs had to do a lot of digging to initially get the sled underneath the rails. Anyone who walked between the winch and the sled when the winch was winding up was fired on the spot, and there was at least one firing. It seems the year before the cable snapped and cut a man in half. Maybe it didn't really happen; maybe it was just a story to scare us.

The next group of men cleared the rotten ties out of the way. Appropriately, this group of men was called the Tie Gang. In the late '20's through the '40's the Section Gang put copper nails in the ties they replaced. The head of each nail had the year on it in raised numerals. So we knew we were replacing ties that were fifty years old and older. Sometimes these ties had partially disintegrated, sometimes they were still held by their spikes to the rail. In the later case someone used a sledge hammer to knock the elevated ties off the rails. We had ten pound and twelve pound sledge hammers. Sometimes many ties in a row were good, sometimes many in a row had to be replaced. Not far behind the sled the suspended rails and few good ties holding joining them together would again be laid down on the railroad bed.

The next group of men, farther behind the sled, placed new ties under the rails, which again rested on the ground. They were also part of the Tie Gang. Several weeks before, a train with flatcars and gondola cars full of new ties came along and these were thrown off into the railroad ditch. These new ties smelled strongly of creosote, the black oily substance soaked into ties to preserve them during their 50-odd year lifetime. I should mention that wooden railroad ties can weigh up to 80 pounds. You or you and another guy could drag them using rail tongs, or you or you and another guy could just carry the tie. Rail tongs look like big curved scissors. The ends turn in and come to a point. If you squeeze the handles together the ends nip into the tie and dig in a little. You get pretty tired wrestling ties all day. You wear gloves and a long sleeve shirt to keep the creosote off you. This group of tie replacing men had a small push car that they used. It held extra new ties in case too many new ties were needed in a certain stretch of track and not enough new ties had been thrown off in that local area. Whenever too many new ties had been thrown off in a particular area, they were loaded onto this push car for use up the line. Sometimes this push car and a couple guys would make it to the very back of the gang to pick up ties. If new ties didn't fit under the track, someone with a shovel had to dig out under the tracks until they would.

Right behind where the new ties are being put down the next group spikes down just enough ties to give the rail the right gauge, or distance between the two rails. They put a tie plate on each side of the track under the rails and drove down spikes - two on each side of the track positioned diagonally. The track gauge itself was metal rod with a lip on each end that fit along the inner rail surfaces. If every ten feet or so of rails were gauged properly then the rest of the ties could be spiked down without having to check the rail-to-rail distance. One particular older foreman liked to gauge track with a couple of hand picked younger guys that he took a liking to. This foreman had been shot in the forehead with a .22 by his ex-wife. It was pretty gross, yet fascinating to watch this skin-covered bullet hole in his forehead undulate do to his high pulse rate from the labor of swinging a spike maul.

A couple of fellows (or gals: we had two) scurry around centering tie plates under the rails above the rest of the ties. The outside edge of some tie plates have a lip on it that fits against the outside edge of the rail. Some tie plates have two ridges and the rail fits snuggly in the middle. Plate People carried a stack of tie plates around to where they are needed. It's and it's like carrying a heavy wobbly bowling ball around.

Next it's time to actually spike the rail to the ties. A claw bar is a very heavy tool (maybe 30 pounds) that has a narrow wedge shaped top and a bottom the size of your fist shaped like your index and middle fingers spread apart. This split is just the right distance apart to grasp spikes. If you need to remove a spike, one gets the head of the spike in this slit of the lower claw and uses leverage to withdraw it. This sometimes takes a lot of strength, especially if you are removing a bent spike from a new tie. You also have the job of removing any bent or loose spikes from old ties that weren't replaced. If you can't get a spike to fit tight using the old spike holes, you use any of the other holes in the four hole tie plate to get at least two spikes in, even if you have to violate the "diagonal" rule. When spiking a tie one man with a claw bar stands sideways to the rail and puts the wide end of the bar under the tie. He leans the lower part of the claw bar against either nearby tie and pushes the top of the claw bar down. This raises one end of the tie to be spiked and it's tie plate up tight against the rail. Sometimes a couple of attempts are made in order to get a tight fit. You can't spike if the tie and plate aren't held tightly to the rail - the blow of the spike maul would hurt the hands of the person holding the claw bar.

Once snug, the person spiking starts a spike into the tie just like you start a nail into a piece of wood. Then he straightens up and begins to drive the spike into the tie. Each tie plate. has four holes in it. We only drove in two spikes diagonal from each other. At first you bend and ruin a lot of spikes. Spiking over the rail breaks spike maul handles easily if you miss. There were times when we had to stand around until a couple of guys went and put new handles on spike maul heads because we had broken all the handles. The head of a spike is not much bigger that a quarter, and the spike maul head is about the size of a Kennedy fifty cent piece. It's hard to do at first, but like anything else you eventually get the hang of it. One trick is to let the weight of the maul head do the work, not your own downward force. Spikes came in small metal barrels. If you were lucky, Plate people would have tossed a couple of spikes near each new tie, otherwise you had run around and get you own.

Sometimes you used a straight metal lining bar to hold ties for spiking. They were maybe five feet long and about three inches thick. Lining bars were intended to move finished track from side to side. A bunch of guys with lining bars dug the bars at a 45 degree angle under the same rail. At the command, "Yo heave", everybody pushed up against the rail until your lining bar was perpendicular. This was hard to do - we had track lining machines that did the actual track lining, thank God we didn't have to do it much.

There are also rail anchors to be put back on. Rail anchors look like the letter "j" and are make up of thick steel. Over time, the force of moving trains can actually make the rail slide in one direction, especially around turns. If four or so rails shift it can open up quite a gap and put a train on the ground. Rail anchors are pounded on the outside of the rail near a tie. The long part of the "j" goes under the rail and you hit the rounded part just so to snap them on. Now if the rail starts to migrate, the rail anchor comes into contact with the tie and won't let the rail slide any further.

The next to last group of men was still further behind the sled. You could be talking a quarter of a mile to a mile by now.They are the Gandys, short for Gandydancers. Sometime between when the first part of the crew quit working the day before and nightfall the Gravel Train has been by. It dumped rock which covered the spaces between the ties we had been replacing. You get a shovel full of rock, then aim it under a tie that has a hollow spot underneath it. You shove the shovel under the tie as hard as you can and then lift the shovel to nearly vertical and jump on the footrest of the shovel several times. This "tamps" or forces rock under the tie. This is called Gandydancing since from afar it looks like twenty or thirty men are hopping up and down and dancing. I can still picture the hard purplish rock we shoveled for a time that first summer. We had a large mechanical tamping machine, too. It went last. It's large mechanical claws fit around and under ties and did the final tamping. We just had to throw shovel loads of rock near the tie for the Tamper's claws to jam under the ties.

The final group is called the Dinger Gang. These guys are quality control and fix up any kind of error made by the first groups. You may still have to dig out a bad tie by hand and replace it. You replace bent spikes or missing spikes, and missing tie plates. You replace broken angle bars. Angle bars are two heavy plates that fit on each side of the rail where two rails come together. The end of each rail has two holes in it, and each angle bar has four corresponding holes - two for each rail end. Four heavy bolts go through the angle bars/rail and are tightened by huge nuts. An angle bar can be cracked and have to be replaced, or else bolts can be sheared off and need to be replaced. Sometimes a rail may be replaced. Our rail was 75 pound rail. That means every three feet weighs 75 pounds. Our rail had dates on it, mainly from the 1920's.

This last picture shows a view of two pieces of rail joined together by a pair of angle bars. We were told never to spike down an angle bar. We would have tried to get the ties on either side of this angle bar and then spike it down. Almost all these pictures were taken at the old Milwaukee Road yard in Austin, MN. We worked in this yard the second year, fixing one of the sidings. This was one of the spots we saw Chili Face. My Grandfather was a dispatcher for the Milwaukee in Austin. The picture of the small push car is from the NorthWestern line in London, MN.