“He didn’t do anything,” laughed Jack. “That was th’ trouble. He was jest naturally lazy—sneakin’ lazy an’ mean. There’s jest two things a railroad asks of its men—you might as well learn it now as any time—they must be on hand when they’re needed, an’ they must be willin’ t’ work. As long as y’re stiddy an’ willin’ t’ work, y’ won’t have no trouble holdin’ a job on a railroad.”
Allan looked out across the fields and determined that in these two respects, at least, he would not be found wanting. He glanced at the other group, gossiping together in the shade of a tree. They were not attractive-looking, certainly, but he was beginning to learn already that a man may be brave and honest, whatever his appearance. They were laughing at one of Reddy’s jokes, and Allan looked at him with a new respect, wondering what it was he had done. The foreman watched the boy’s face with a little smile, reading his thoughts.
“He ain’t much t’ look at, is he?” he said. “But you’ll soon learn—if you ain’t learnt already—that you can’t judge a man’s inside by his outside. There’s no place you’ll learn it quicker than on a railroad. Railroad men, barrin’ th’ passenger train crews, who have t’ keep themselves spruced up t’ hold their jobs, ain’t much t’ look at, as a rule, but down at th’ bottom of most of them there allers seems t’ be a man—a real man—a man who don’t lose his head when he sees death a-starin’ him in th’ face, but jest grits his teeth an’ sticks to his post an’ does his duty. Railroad men ain’t little tin gods nor plaster saints—fur from it!—but they’re worth a mighty sight more than either. There was Jim Blakeson, th’ skinniest, lankest, most woe-begone-lookin’ feller I ever see outside of a circus. He was brakin’ front-end one night on third ninety-eight, an’—”
From afar off came the faint blowing of whistles, telling that, in the town of Wadsworth, the wheels in the factories had started up again, that men and women were bending again to their tasks, after the brief noon hour. Welsh stopped abruptly, much to Allan’s disappointment, knocked out his pipe against his boot-heel, and rose quickly to his feet. If there was one article in Welsh’s code of honour which stood before all the rest, it was this: That the railroad which employed him should have the full use of the ten hours a day for which it paid. To waste any part of that time was to steal the railroad’s money. It is a good principle for any man—or for any boy—to cling to.
“One o’clock!” he cried. “Come on, boys! We’ve got a good stretch o’ track to finish up down there.”
The dinner-pails were replaced on the hand-car and it was run down the road about half a mile and then derailed again. The straining work began; tugging at the bars, tamping gravel under the ties, driving new spikes, replacing a fish-plate here and there. And the new hand learned many things.
He learned that with the advent of the great, modern, ten-wheeled freight locomotives, all the rails on the line had been replaced with heavier ones weighing eighty-five pounds to the yard,—850 pounds to their thirty feet of length,—the old ones being too light to carry such enormous weights with safety. They were called T-rails, because, in cross-section, they somewhat resembled that letter. The top of the rail is the “head”; the thinner stem, the “web”; and the wide, flat bottom, the “base.” Besides being spiked down to the ties, which are first firmly bedded in gravel or crushed stone, the rails are bolted together at the ends with iron bars called “fish-plates.” These are fitted to the web, one on each side of the junction of two rails, and bolts are then passed through them and nuts screwed on tightly.
This work of joining the rails is done with such nicety, and the road-bed built so solidly, that there is no longer such a great rattle and bang as the trains pass over them—a rattle and bang formerly as destructive to the track as to the nerves of the passenger. It is the duty of the section-foreman to see that the six or eight miles of track which is under his supervision is kept in the best possible shape, and to inspect it from end to end twice daily, to guard against any possibility of accident.
As the hours passed, Allan’s muscles began to ache sadly, but there were few chances to rest. At last the foreman perceived that he was overworking himself, and sent him and Reddy back to bring up the hand-car and prepare for the homeward trip. They walked back to where it stood, rolled it out upon the track, and pumped it down to the spot where the others were working, Reddy giving Allan his first lesson in how to work the levers, for there is a right and wrong way of managing a hand-car, just as there is a right and wrong way of doing everything else.
“That’s about all we kin do to-day,” and Jack took out his watch and looked at it reflectively, as the car came rolling up. “I guess we kin git in before Number Six comes along. What y’ think?” and he looked at Reddy.