I been working on the railroad:
Another job I had was laying track. Not in the new manner that extruded rail is placed off a revolving coil or however that works…Nope. We did it in the old fashioned, ‘convicts working out their sentence’ manner. Brute strength and ignorance. I think that this was another one of the jobs that Ruth, the Front Desk Lady at the Labrador West Canada Manpower office managed to select for me out of the collection of gems that she gathered. Perhaps she felt that I needed to escalate my exercise regime to an undiscovered level. Lord knows she hated to see anybody hanging around. Hard work is good work was her motto I’m sure. If that were true then she saved the best ones for me.
Here’s the background. All items that were needed in Labrador West, like medical supplies (including beer and liquor), food, automobiles, building supplies (including beer and liquor), sports equipment, consumer goods, consumer bads, Tools, insecticides, explosives, chemicals, big heavy things, and all manner of recreation items (including beer and liquor)…all have to come in by rail from Sept Isles.
Early on, the Iron Ore Company was happy enough to have all items arrive and offload at their operations at the train station, but as the communities grew this became quite cumbersome in logistics. After all, you can’t have offloading of diapers and maxipads hold up production at the pellet plant, and inversely you really can’t expect production at the pellet plant to hold up the offloading of critical commodities (like beer and liquor), especially on a Friday! Also, the town of Wabush was supporting an entirely different Iron ore mining facility! Why help them?!
The decision was made for a new industrial park to be constructed between Wabush and Labrador City, with feeder lines from the railway servicing the warehouses and shops in the park. The rail line had to be built but it wasn’t a big enough project to legitimize bringing in the heavy equipment for laying track…and since there was a definite shortage of experienced Chinese coolies in the region, unemployed students and laze abouts would do.
Here’s how it worked. We would show up early in the mornings with our coffee and cigarettes and hangovers and tall tales of the night before. Way too early. It would still be cold, and usually damp. We would stand there up to our ankles in muck or dust, depending on the particular moods of the weather gods and discuss how many lengths we were expected to lay that day. The gravel bed had already been laid down and many of the ties were generally in place. We would have to move them around for final positioning, otherwise, how else were we supposed to get that black, stinky, creosote tar on our clothing?
Eight of us would stand on one side of a length of steel rail and another eight on the other side. Using a tool that resembled two long handled hooks joined by a pin at the curve we would place the the open mouth over the top of the railing. Then, lifting the handles with both our arms the mouth would close, clamping onto the rail. In unison we all would grunt and lift the rail. They were heavy, even for sixteen men! Once we were up we would shuffle our way up onto the gravel bed and carefully ease the rail into position on the ties. After a few weeks we got to be pretty good at this so only occasionally someone would forget where their feet were and have a railway length support itself on their steel toed boot. This only happened to me once, and I can assure you that is as frightening as it is massive! Although the steel toe protected my foot, the shear weight of the rail pushed my foot into the gravel in effect distorting my foot from the bottom up. I limped for about a week…but I never, ever let that happen again.
The mornings were spent doing this then we would break for lunch, which usually consisted of whatever sandwiches we managed to bring, a can of pop, and a few protein filled mouthfuls of blackflies (usually taken over the course of the day). All this would be washed down with sweat and DEET. In the afternoon we would drive the spikes holding the rails into place. That was one good thing anyway. We only had to drive one of every four spikes because once they were in position we could run an automatic hammer up the rails and drive the others.
I did that job day in and day out for a whole summer. The pay was pretty good as I remember and at the end of it I was in pretty good shape overall. Swinging a sledge hammer for hours on end can do that for you. I can assure you that it is not a job for an old fart though. I wouldn’t want to do it now.
Another job I had was laying track. Not in the new manner that extruded rail is placed off a revolving coil or however that works…Nope. We did it in the old fashioned, ‘convicts working out their sentence’ manner. Brute strength and ignorance. I think that this was another one of the jobs that Ruth, the Front Desk Lady at the Labrador West Canada Manpower office managed to select for me out of the collection of gems that she gathered. Perhaps she felt that I needed to escalate my exercise regime to an undiscovered level. Lord knows she hated to see anybody hanging around. Hard work is good work was her motto I’m sure. If that were true then she saved the best ones for me.
Here’s the background. All items that were needed in Labrador West, like medical supplies (including beer and liquor), food, automobiles, building supplies (including beer and liquor), sports equipment, consumer goods, consumer bads, Tools, insecticides, explosives, chemicals, big heavy things, and all manner of recreation items (including beer and liquor)…all have to come in by rail from Sept Isles.
Early on, the Iron Ore Company was happy enough to have all items arrive and offload at their operations at the train station, but as the communities grew this became quite cumbersome in logistics. After all, you can’t have offloading of diapers and maxipads hold up production at the pellet plant, and inversely you really can’t expect production at the pellet plant to hold up the offloading of critical commodities (like beer and liquor), especially on a Friday! Also, the town of Wabush was supporting an entirely different Iron ore mining facility! Why help them?!
The decision was made for a new industrial park to be constructed between Wabush and Labrador City, with feeder lines from the railway servicing the warehouses and shops in the park. The rail line had to be built but it wasn’t a big enough project to legitimize bringing in the heavy equipment for laying track…and since there was a definite shortage of experienced Chinese coolies in the region, unemployed students and laze abouts would do.
Here’s how it worked. We would show up early in the mornings with our coffee and cigarettes and hangovers and tall tales of the night before. Way too early. It would still be cold, and usually damp. We would stand there up to our ankles in muck or dust, depending on the particular moods of the weather gods and discuss how many lengths we were expected to lay that day. The gravel bed had already been laid down and many of the ties were generally in place. We would have to move them around for final positioning, otherwise, how else were we supposed to get that black, stinky, creosote tar on our clothing?
Eight of us would stand on one side of a length of steel rail and another eight on the other side. Using a tool that resembled two long handled hooks joined by a pin at the curve we would place the the open mouth over the top of the railing. Then, lifting the handles with both our arms the mouth would close, clamping onto the rail. In unison we all would grunt and lift the rail. They were heavy, even for sixteen men! Once we were up we would shuffle our way up onto the gravel bed and carefully ease the rail into position on the ties. After a few weeks we got to be pretty good at this so only occasionally someone would forget where their feet were and have a railway length support itself on their steel toed boot. This only happened to me once, and I can assure you that is as frightening as it is massive! Although the steel toe protected my foot, the shear weight of the rail pushed my foot into the gravel in effect distorting my foot from the bottom up. I limped for about a week…but I never, ever let that happen again.
The mornings were spent doing this then we would break for lunch, which usually consisted of whatever sandwiches we managed to bring, a can of pop, and a few protein filled mouthfuls of blackflies (usually taken over the course of the day). All this would be washed down with sweat and DEET. In the afternoon we would drive the spikes holding the rails into place. That was one good thing anyway. We only had to drive one of every four spikes because once they were in position we could run an automatic hammer up the rails and drive the others.
I did that job day in and day out for a whole summer. The pay was pretty good as I remember and at the end of it I was in pretty good shape overall. Swinging a sledge hammer for hours on end can do that for you. I can assure you that it is not a job for an old fart though. I wouldn’t want to do it now.