First railways, Rubbermaid tilt trucks
History colors our daily lives because we are all a result of what has come before us, and also because when we know our history, we look more appreciatively on the present, understanding what we have more fully. Those plastic tilt trucks that just seem to be conveniently there to help get the job done would have seemed alien to the laborers on the Union Pacific Railroad track in the 1860s, for example. Surely they would have appreciated these relatively light, wheeled, balanced, handled carts. The work they did was heavy and grueling, often under the hot sun. You can see why these men would have been relieved to have a few Rubbermaid tilt trucks or other modern machines on hand as they each took turns making way for the great trains:
- First came the surveyors, then the "tunnelers" and the "bridgers".
- The grading crew followed, making the rail bed level with pickaxes and shovels.
- In a nearby town, men called "tie hacks" would cut trees and shape them into railway ties by hand, then float them downstream.
- The tie-layers would take these ties and put down between 2,260 and 2,640 per mile.
- Finally, the "rust eaters" installed the rails.
No plastic tilt trucks in 1867
How did the men get their supplies? Supply trains went as far as they could, and from there new rails were loaded onto horse-drawn cars. It's easy to imagine how useful heavy-duty Rubbermaid tilt trucks would have been! They stacked 16 rails on each car, and then the horses would take them to the end of the track. It took four men to drag each rail into place. Once each rail was lined up using a wooden gauge, the foreman would order the rail to be levered. Other men would drive in the spikes; with two spikes per rail, per tie, these men were pounding in over 9,000 spikes per mile. Too bad they had no plastic tilt trucks to help them move the heavy ties and spikes down the line; the tools, the hardware, and the loads were so heavy. Lastly, the rails were connected to one another with "fish plates", and this required the installation of four bolts per rail. That's a lot of heavy work under the hot Wyoming desert sun. It can make a person appreciate the tools and machines of our modern life.
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