Many people call road rollers “steam rollers.” That’s because the first ones really were driven by steam engines. Men have a lot less fuss and bother with a modern Diesel-engined tandem. There’s no need to start the fire or shovel coal to keep steam up. You can still see some steam rollers at work, though, because they are strong machines that last a long time. But when one wears out, it is replaced with a modern roller.
After the roller finished smoothing all the asphalt down, Charlie’s road was ready for traffic, but the job still wasn’t quite done. All along the highway the machines had left bare banks of earth. These had to be protected from the weather—just the way a house is protected with a coat of paint. The best coat for the earth is grass of one kind or another. So Charlie turned gardener. In some places he used the motor grader again to prepare the soil so that seed could be planted. With the blade of his grader hung away out at the side and pointed up in the air, he smoothed off the steep banks. Running along the edge of the road, he filled in the soft shoulders.
Then a seed-planter sowed the grass. And finally Charlie used the strangest machine of all. It chugged and puffed and spit out great mouthfuls of hay, which fell over the newly-planted grass! The hay protected the grass seed and kept it moist until its roots were growing strongly in the soil.
MORE ROAD WORK
The road was finished now, but some of the machines still had work ahead of them. In fact, road work is never ended.
All summer long, tractors pull mowing machines beside the highways, cutting the grass. Brush and small trees must be kept cleared away so that drivers can see ahead. In winter, the motor graders and the snow plows can keep the road clear. But in places where heavy snow piles up into drifts, caterpillar tractors often push special snow plows that eat through the drifts with powerful whirling blades. With one motion these plows dig out the snow and throw it off to one side of the road.
The caterpillar treads work better in snow than wheels with tires. So the “cats” are used all winter long in the Far North. There they even pull whole trailer trains on runners. The one in the picture is hauling Muskeg schooners, which are really trailer houses on sleds. Muskeg is an Indian word for swamp. The cats pull the schooners over frozen, snow-covered swamps.
You may wonder why anyone wants to use a trailer home in the roadless wastes of the Far North. The fact is that men work there the year round, prospecting for oil. When they think they have located oil there or anywhere else, well-drilling machinery goes to work.