![]() ![]() Attached at the opposite end, a tender car carried water or fuel to fire the boiler.īut it was the rails laid by hefty gangs of men, known as navvies, gandy dancers and traqueros dropped the heavy ribbons of iron in place followed by gaugers, spikers and bolters who would make tracks that underpinned the operation.Īnd where did these trains halt? In the early days, end of track existed at hell on wheels, raucous temporary towns, like Diablo Canyon, Arizona, Deeth, Nevada, and some of which became permanent, like Cheyenne, Wyoming. He painted a word picture of: An American railroad car, that long, narrow wooden box like a flat roofed Noah’s ark. Robert Louis Stevenson’s descriptive prose in his 1879 classic The Amateur Emigrant was no less picturesque. Hart’s photo of Central Pacific Railroad #63 locomotive near the short-lived hell on wheels town of Deeth, Nevada, circa 1869.īesides the cars, the engine consisted of many parts such as the prow where cowcatcher or pilot which pushed obstructions out of the way. Chorus: To work upon the railway, the railway, To work up-on the railway. He painted a word picture of: “An American railroad car, that long, narrow wooden box like a flat roofed Noah’s ark, with a stove and a convenience, one at either end, a passage down the middle, and transverse benches upon either hand.” Alfred A. Robert Louis Stevenson’s descriptive prose in his 1879 classic The Amateur Emigrant was no less picturesque. Poor Paddy Works on the Railway In eighteen hundred and forty one, me corduroy breeches I put on Me corduroy breeches I put on, to work upon the railway. Much like the lore of Old West cattle drives, the legendary construction of the Western railroads inspired a litany of songs and many special colorful terms and bits of doggerel.Īn Irish and American folk tune Poor Paddy Works on the Railway immortalized the backbreaking labor of the gandy dancers.Ĭhorus: To work upon the railway, the railway, The iron horse evokes images of smoke and cinders billowing from a steam locomotive stack as it sails down the trackless wastes of the frontier.
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