THE "SCRUBBER" MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 25, 30 January 1934, Page 8

THE "SCRUBBER" MAN.

CLEANING TRAM LINES,

AN INTERRUPTED JOB. There are four "scrubber" men in Auckland, but they don't use soap aii'l water on the job. You will see them any day on some section of tram line; they operate tlie Transport Board's "scrubber," the ungainly machine that resembles a milkflont and a railway jigger in a state of collision. The machine or vehicle, call it what you will, rests above the tram lines and scrubs the corrugations out of the rails with an emery block. '"Soon pets corrugated," the sernbber-man-in-chief pointed out, "with 18 to 20 tons passing over every five minutes." As the machine has to he stopped and removed at the approach of every tram it will be seen that practically half the life of a scrubber man is spent in shifting his tools, a privilege which "Punch" would have us believe is confined to the plumber.

Scrubbing out corrugations is also one of these day-in-day-ont-start-all-over-again-wlien-you're-finisheo" jobs. When you have finally scrubbed out all the bumps in Auckland's miles of track, it's time to start all over again. When the tracks in Queen Street need grinding the work has to be done in the early hours of the morning, and the sight of four scrubber men bending over the jig-jig-jigging machine in the isolated glare of a floodlight is as typical an example of our mechanised age as one could wish for.

Speaking of floodlights one is reminded of another little-considered job which takes two men over the length and breadth of Auckland every 12 months. The men who polish the thousands of lamp globes in Greater Auckland. They, too, have to start all over again as soon as they've polished the last outlying floodlamp. The famo of the men who spend their lives perpetually painting New York's great bridge has gone round the world. But what, of Auckland's four scrubber men and two lamp-polishers? How too churlish to deny these six their meed of fame.