The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897. Various
the actual work of laying the line. We went out in a car drawn by a spare engine, to see this at the place where the work was in progress. The second construction train had reached the scene of active operations just before we arrived, and the desert fairly hummed with busy turmoil. It has been given but to few to see a railway line made and used while you wait. Yet we had that experience on this afternoon. Everything was done at once. The long train moves slowly toward the end of the rails, getting as near to the bare bank as is possible. So soon as she stops, an eager army of workers attack her, with, of course, much wild noise of strange rhythmic chant. To the uninitiated this onslaught of the workers on the train bears all the appearance of a raid, yet, should one watch awhile, it gradually dawns upon one that marvellous orderliness and most studied method underlie every seemingly wild movement. The engine stops—say, ten rail lengths from the end of the track—and the game begins. The rail-cars are in front, just behind the tender, with the rails neatly ranged on racks. At once to either side of each rail-car rushes a party of, if Egyptians, eight men, if blacks, ten, upon whose padded shoulders the ton of sun-heated metal is placed by the car party. Then they run—they do literally run—away with the unwieldy thing to its destined place, where, once it is placed on the sleepers, the gaugers and strikers get at it, and it is put in position and pinned (to each alternate sleeper, the operation being completed after the heavy train has passed over the newly laid rails) in an incredibly short time, at the end of which a bugle sounds, the steam whistle blows, the engine moves slowly forward over the rails that less than five minutes ago were stacked on the cars behind her, and the whole operation is repeated."
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