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What's a gandy dancer? I've heard that term a lot around railroads...just curious.
Posts: 106 | From: Hilton NY USA | Registered: Feb 2001
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A gandy dancer was the name given to railroad maintenance workers who drove spikes, aligned ties, and secured rail to the ties with the spikes and fish plates (which I believe is the name of the metal plates that sit on the ties under the rails, with four holes in them for spikes). I think the gandy dancers usually worked in pairs- one on each side of a rail. Each would "spike" the rail down, and continue along down the tracks. Here are two sites that you can look at. This one is an attempted explanation of the origin of the term: http://www.quinion.com/words/qa/qa-gan1.htm and this one is a very good list of almost all RR terms and lingo: http://www.railroadextra.com/glossry1.HtmlPosts: 553 | From: Flagstaff, AZ USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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The track layers worked in crews and their efforts needed to be coordinated to move the rails. Songs, more like chants, and their inherent rhythm were an effective means of coordinating the effort and making the work feel easier physically and emotionally. The Gandy Dancer was the leader who lead the chants and established the rhythm to which the crew timed themselves. It was also a way to impart information w/o bosses knowing exactly whaty was being communicated and it was a way to maintain cultural and religious traditions. So it not only looked like dancing. It was dancing.
Check out the NEA home page. They have links to videos and audios of folk music specialists who saved and recorded and or re-recorded some the chants. I don't know how to include the link otherwise I'd have put it in. I think the Library of Congress has some of these recordings, too.
Old Folkie Ira
Posts: 300 | From: Denver, CO USA | Registered: Aug 2000
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Thanks for the links, Ira! I didn't realize how incredible these workers really were, with the songs and coded messages and everything!
Posts: 553 | From: Flagstaff, AZ USA | Registered: Apr 2001
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And thank you, Eric, for the glossary!! I find some of those terms fascinating. Just as there is a lexicon for so many subcultures, so there is for railroading. From Gandy Dancer to Foamer...
And between us all on this forum, there sure is a wealth of info and experience.
PS - I should have addressed that last post to Jesse, too. He started started this.
Ira
Posts: 300 | From: Denver, CO USA | Registered: Aug 2000
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A fishplate is the piece of metal joining two rails together. CWR (continuously welded rail) does not need fishplates as the rails are welded together instead.
I'm not sure what the plate between the rails and the ties is called though.
Geoff M.
Posts: 2426 | From: Apple Valley, CA | Registered: Sep 2000
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