1973 16mm film by Jack Schrader and Tom Burton that features field recordings of work chants of Gandy Dancers including aligning songs and chants to knock out slack in the rail. Shot with a 16mm Bolex camera without sync sound, the visuals shows men working with cross ties, aligning the track, and spiking. The film focuses on the changes brought about by mechanization of railroad building.
Damn, those are some hard, tough men. Not a snowflake among them.
Watching those guys work their hammers is amazing, but check out the looks on their faces when they see the spike driving machine that's going to take their jobs.
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And along the same lines:
Track Work - Then and Now
Take an inside look at how track work has changed over the decades.
VIDEO HERE (9:14 minutes)
a song related to gandy dancers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zb1qsVqjwg
ReplyDeleteU. Utah (Bruce) Phillips was a Communist. To the Nth degree.
DeleteWithout a doubt, but he could spin a tale that was entertaining IMHO. The stuff I had exposure to was his prose on the hobo life. The rest yeah, commie, but you dont really know your friends or foes insulating yourself from learning what they are about.
DeleteI couldn't help but learn what he was about. He lived the last 20 plus years of his life near my home town and in those years the local paper gushed incessantly about his wonderfulness. To me he was just another B.S. artist who made a living off of the art and croissant crowd. The only positive thing he did around here was help to start a homeless shelter long before there was a homeless problem.
DeleteGood info. Lot of work being replaced by a machine.
ReplyDeleteI worked on a section steel gang for the SP railroad back in the early '70s. They had spike driving machines, but some of the work was still done by hand. Learning how to swing a spike maul comes in handy for splitting firewood if you don't have a hydraulic splitter!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MKcTbYDP7w
ReplyDelete