“STEEL GANGS.”

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 2 January 1926, Page 6

“STEEL GANGS.”

LAYING RAILWAY TRACKS. ‘ THE LATEST MACHINE METHOD. In 30 minutes the train is due, the leader of the gang announces, and all hands flitch in with crowbars, wrenches, and sledges to wreck the track. Spikes iiy and rails fall. These are not railway bandits, nouever, planning a wreck (says the New York Times). When the express Hies by it will go even more smoothly than on its previous trip, and the engineer will bless those wreckers for a brandnew track. In a brief half-hour they will have taken out the worn rails and replaced them with others just out or the shop. They will have bolted and spiked them securely. Railroads have made their way to most of the places where their service is demanded in the United States; still, rail-laying goes on as busily as if the empire building period were still in progress. Like street pavements, tracks wear out and must be replaced. Until recently this work was done much as it was done when the lines were first built. An innovation came with the work train and its steam derrick that precedes the “steel gag.” The train distributes the rails, spikes, bolts, angle bars, and .tie plates along both sides of the track, spacing them properly so as to save additional carrying. The actual relaying of the line, nn- • til the new electric rail-laying machine came into service, used to he hand work, with the assistance ofAi hand-operated tools. A gang of men or so pulled spikes, and three or / four men followed them, throwing out the old rails with crowbars. Other men busied themselves with mallets, driving creosoted plugs into the old spiked holes; and the rest took to adzing ties and placing the plates. As soon as the old - rail was thrown off the new was placed with tongs, a slow and arduous task, then bolted and spiked. The iob of the “steel gang” has been revolutionised by electricity. The | new rail-laying machine handles, the 39ft rails, weighing 901 b to the yard, deftly, by means of its 20ft boom. It lias a bolt and wrench motor that does the work of 10 men in uncoupling the old rail and of five men in bolting the new rail. It carries, too, a motor-driven rail-drilling outfit that drills the usual 20 holes for a new switch in half an hour or less.

Some of the old steel gangs have made remarkable time records by sheer muscular power. Sixty men were recently working on a 30-mile stretch of badly-worn rail through the Ozarks, in Missouri, changing BClb rails for 901 b. They averaged 130 rails a day, about half a mile of new track. But another gang of 45 men on the same railroad in lowa, with the assistance of a raillaying machine, matched this achievement of a day in one hour. They completed laying nine and a half miles of railroad in less than a month, a phenomenal feat. The machine could have worked much faster, it is said, if it had been manned with a larger force. But the gang present could not keep ahead of and follow the machine working at a greater rate of speed. The foreman in charge of the machine, who has been laying steel for 30 years, calls it the greatest laboursaving device in the world. Its timesaving feature is even more important. Every second counts when rails have to be changed between trains. When the gang starts in the morning the. foreman gets a “line-up” on the day’s schedule along his stretch of track; Then he figures how many rails can be changed at each set-to of the gang, and issues orders accordingly. Away the men go, tearing up the track, with the train only a few minutes away. But by the time the express comes along the track has been renewed. To insure safety, flagmen are placed on each side of the .gang and two “guns” or torpedoes are placed on the track to warn the engineer that men are working ahead. If it is impossible to get the rails fully spiked before the flier is due, the train need not stop, hut only respond to the signal to go slow. The train service is never interfered with, no matter how frequent are the interruptions for the “steel gang.” An essential of rail laying equipment, whether the job is done by hand or machine, is a thermometer. On account of the contracting of >n cold weather and its expansion in hot weather, it is necessary to make proper allowance at the joints. The temperature is taken at the ends of the rails and a regular table of allowances is followed for the gauge. Rails used te he bent’ to follow curves, hut rail-bending days are over now.