With permission from Chris Muller of RailServe here is an interesting article by Dave Johnson about the Track Crews who worked track repairs by hand using various songs or chants to get their timing as they worked in unison. GANDY DANCING There is a pretty well known folk song called “The Gandy Dancer’s Ball” “They danced on the ceiling and they danced on the wall at the Gandy dancer’s ball.’ I’ll bet most of the people who sing this song have no idea what a Gandy dancer is. I know because I was one. A Gandy dancer is a railroad section hand, specifically a member of an “extra gang”. Extra gangs, as the name implies, are temporary crews hired for a summer’s work replacing rotting ties. The name Gandy comes from the maker of a machine these gangs use in their work. They had the name “Gandy” written right across the front. These jobs were not covered by the union that represented the permenent rail workers. The work was hard, monotonous and could be dangerous. Gandy dancers were the bottom of the barrel in more ways than one. We were paid from a card table set up in the back of a tavern and, a lot of the money stayed right in that tavern. When I signed on, the guy who hired me said “Lift with your legs, not your back. Now you know as much as guys who have worked here for years.” I had just gotten out of the Navy and the crew was passing by the town I lived in. I worked with the gang until they moved so far away it didn’t pay me to keep on commuting to the job. Most of the workers lived in an old Pullman car and took their meals there. The car followed the crew along, this summer, from Minnesota, across Wisconsin. Most crew members had been recruited from the skid rows of Minneapolis. They worked long enough in the summer to draw unemployment,” rocking chair money”, the following winter. The Gandy crews were the final act in a chain of events that started with someone walking the tracks and marking with yellow paint any ties they felt should be replaced. Sometime after that, crews dropped a new tie beside every tie with yellow paint on it. [ In Britain and its former colonies, what we call “ties” are called “sleepers”.] Finally we came along and replaced the old ties with the new ones. Our crew and its equipment stretched out for almost a mile along the track. The equipment was light enough so that we could lift it off the track when trains came by. A telegrapher accompanied the crew and warned us when a train was due, hopefully with enough time to get ourselves and our gear well away from the tracks. This wasn’t always the case. Several times we had no place to go away from the tracks and we stood with our backs to the track just a few feet away from the passing train, hunched over with gravel and cinders flying up around us. After the train passed, we lifted our gear back onto the track and continued our work. The first man in our long line carried a long iron rod that ended in a large claw like on a hammer. He used this to pull the spikes out from the ties. Next came guys with shovels who shoveled the gravel away from the ties just inside the rails. Then came the Gandy machine which rode on the rails. The Gandy had a motor operated saw that cut the ties in two places just inside the rails where the gravel had been cleared away, thus, cutting the ties into three pieces, one in the center and two shorter ones, one under each rail. Two guys with ice tongs then straddled the center piece and lifted it out. The Gandy was pushed in and using two hydraulic rams, pushed the two pieces out from under the rails leaving a clear space under the tracks to accomodate the new tie. The men with the tongs pushed and pulled the new tie into place where the old tie had been. These were all oak ties and heavy and the opening under the track wasn’t always clear so, it was very hard work out there with nothing between you and whatever weather there happened to be. Once a new tie was in place, it was spiked down. Then gravel was replaced around it and tamped down. We did this with an engine operated tamper. This completed the job and we moved on. Given the guys who did this work the summer I was there, I can’t see where anyone would make up a song about them or picture any of them dancing. What I think is that, considering that this was the lowest, hardest, work on the railroad it was probably done by Blacks in the South. I would guess that because they wouldn’t have had any tamping machine, they stomped down the gravel with their feet. They may have used some rhythm to do this or, it may have looked that way to passers by. Thus, the idea of Gandy dancing. A secondary task we had was straightening rails. The rails would drift around a bit over time but it was hard to see just where they had gotten off by sighting down them. We did it when a train went by. Immediately after the train had passed, our foreman would flop down on a rail and watch the train. He would note any wobble in the caboose and would jump up and run down to the spot where he saw the wobble. We would follow after him with long pry poles. He would indicate where and which way to pry and we would all heave away until he was satisfied. We rode what used to be called “hand cars” to work and back. These were operated by small, putt-putt engines. We would load up all our gear and a big can of cold water with a cake of ice in it.and a tin cup for drinking and out we would go. Often guys were hung over or still drunk from the night before so it wasn’t a pleasant trip. I remember we would go by a golf course and the guys would hoot and holler at the golfers who they felt superior to since it seemed to them that anyone out in the hot sun that didn’t have to be was a fool. On my first day there, I made a big mistake. Each of us had to take a shovel out with him. The shovels all looked identical to me and I just grabbed one. One of the guys immediately claimed that as his shovel. It turned out that men had favorite shovels which they marked in various ways on the handles. That was the first experience I had with people who had so little to call their own that a company shovel became important to them. When I quit, the foreman asked me why I was leaving. “I just couldn’t get interested” I said. Its strange that now, after all these years, it seems pretty interesting to me and, apparently to others. It should be noted that this all goes back to 1955 and I may have some of the details wrong, in fact, I’m sure I do but, this is how I remember it. I remember the Gandy name on the machine but I don’t remember anyone referring to the extra gangs as Gandy gangs nor do I ever remember using the word other than to describe the machine. Dave Johnson
I will add that back in the earlier days, there were "Timing Chants" some of the track gangs used. A Chanter or Lead Man called out much the same as when we were marching to maintain our staying "in step". One was: "I'ma gonna work my time till I git PAID! When I git me a dolla I'll have it MADE! AH UH HUH! All the bars would go "BANG"!!! (There were a number of different verses.) Each man bad a long crow bar and would stick one end under the rail, then tap his bar up against the bottom side of the rail they were going to move sideways, in time to this chant. All 10 to 30 men were getting "in time" tapping to the chant, then when the caller said "AH UH" each man got ready, grabbed his bar with both hands, and when the caller said "HUH" they all in unison gave a heavy haul up on the bar, BANG moving the track ties and all 1/4" to as much as 2" at a time. On the old Norfolk Western the caller sometimes did a bit of a jig or tapped his feet while calling, which may have lead to the idea they were dancing. On Rails Ahead, TV documentary (I think it was), they had a short section showing a re-production of this not too long ago on PBS. Maybe some of you saw it. [ June 14, 2005, 12:44 AM: Message edited by: watash ]
