Talk:Gandy dancer/Archives/2013

Some good info from an old forum

Some good info from an old (2-19-00) forum page:

The "Gandy" company produced aligninging bars, tamping bars and shovels, all with the company name "Gandy" on them. Almost all of the "gangs" that I worked in had a Lead man that chanted while the gang worked. The chant would keep everyone working "dancing" together at the same rate. It was great for aligning track, you could have a dozen men moving panels of track from side to side easily, to make it straight. When the "Gandys" were in use, the Section Foremen were very competitive. They were awarded prizes for the best sections. After grooming the track and the right of way, we would "dress" the stone ballast, so that it was an unbroken straight line along the edge. We used "Brush Hooks" to clean away the small trees, but I don't recall "Gandy" being on the "Brush Hooks".

Ex-Gandy

When I was a young man on the hobo road, I worked the temporary section gangs on the Western Pacific out of Winnemucca, Nevada and the Denver & Rio Grande Western at Grand Junction, Colorado. We were all refered to as 'Gandy Dancers'.

The gangs I worked on were 'tie gangs' meaning we replaced worn ties. In replacing a tie, we would pry the rail and tie plate up high enough to drag the adjacent worn tie out of its nest and slide a new one in to take its place. This was before automation (1950's) and the prying of the rail was all done by hand. We used a tool that was actually called a gandy (and yes, it was manufactured by the Gandy Shovel Company)to do the prying. The tool was a six or seven foot hickory handle of very stout diameter; attached to one end was a steel plate or lip that we'd jam between the tie and a loosened tie plate. By bending the Gandy back, we'd naturally raise the rail above the next tie. To gain leverage, we'd push down on the handle as near to the end as possible and if we still weren't able to raise the rail far enough, we'd actually stand on the handle using our full body weight for maximum purchase. Some of the guys were rather adept at this technique and could stand balanced out on the end of that handle while the rest of us blocked the raised rail. The 'art' of standing on that gandy without falling off was known as 'Gandy Dancing'.

The earlier post that refers to the section foreman keeping cadence while the grunts moved rails into place is also true; they used that same gandy tool to scoot the rail sideways to achieve the proper gauge before spiking it down. But that was certainly more of a shuffel than a dance. Forced to choose between the two explanations, I would go with the first example of actually 'dancing' on the handle.

Buzz Potter, President National Hobo Association

Gandydancer (talk) 18:12, 22 May 2013 (UTC)