Product Synopsis

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V. WINTER TRACK FORCE, TOOLS AND SUPPLIES. From various sources are heard expressions from time to time to the effect that the railways of America are not economically maintained. It is noteworthy that these criticisms come usually from men who know the least about the real work of keeping tracks in good order. There is no one to whom a business seems so easy and so simple as to the man who has never tried it and who knows nothing at all about it. Anyone watching a game which he does not understand, always thinks it dull and easy to play. There are also critics of railway maintenance who have some insight into how it should be done. They have studied the job, and they have seen it done,--but have never really tried it themselves. They are supposed to be experts. An expert has been said to be a man who makes a living by telling other men how to do things that he cannot do himself. There are many such experts in and out of the railway business. A certain legislator once violently opposed an appropriation which was asked for a government railway because a part of the money asked for was to be spent to pay more wages to trackmen. In his speech against the bill, he raised the question of the need of track gangs on government railways. "I travel up and down this railway at least six times a year," he said. "I always see these gangs, sometimes few and sometimes many men in a gang. What are they doing, I ask you? You all ride over these tracks. You all see these men we are asked to vote money to pay. Do they work? No, sir, they do not work! I have watched them many times. I have seen, and so you will see, fellow legislators, if you will but look from a side window of the car you sit in, as the train passes, these idle government employes, leaning on their...