An Irish Navvy by Donall MacAmhlaigh

Author:Donall MacAmhlaigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Collins Press

1 An old hag of Irish legend.

2 A reference to Tomás Ó Criomhthain who wrote The Islandman which was translated by Robin Flower and is available in the Oxford Classics series.

5

Laying Rails

June 1956. Re-laying tracks on the railroads in the Midlands is the job we’re on at the moment—that and riddling ballast on Sundays. Thirty of us altogether are on the job but we’re not working directly for the Railway Company but for a private contractor. We’re getting paid at the rate of three and nine-pence halfpenny an hour and, as we work six days a week (Saturdays are free), we knock back up to fifteen pounds ten, less tax and insurance.

As for the work itself, well, times it was hard and times it was easy. We’d take so many rails to begin with—five hundred yards, say—and lay the new line in place of the old one. On these lines we do all the work by hand—but, on the main lines, engines are used. We work like this: the first gang comes along with their hammers and take out the ‘keys’ (or the little ‘fish-plates’ or clamps of wood that keep the rails in place and, while they’re at that, another gang is loosening the fish-plates at either end of the rail. When that’s done, another gang (about ten or so) come along and lift the rails out of the ‘chairs’ that rest between them and the sleepers. As the rails are loosened (they are sixty feet long), all the gang, every one of us, have to lift them together. As we get the word from the foreman, we throw the rail into the long wagon that is there to receive it. Then the ‘chairs’, the fish-plates and the other little things have to be gathered and put into the other wagons. When all that is done, the sleepers are lifted and put in their turn into a special wagon. All that has to be done then is to even out the ground for the re-laying.

As the worn-out stuff is carted away, the new stuff (though sometimes it’s part-worn) is brought along and we start to lay the rails again. The sleepers go down first and then the whole gang carry the rails and lay them in their place. Each couple of men has something like a pair of tongs to carry the rails and with the help of crowbars they are laid into the ‘chairs’.

I brought Paddy Dollart with me this morning and the foreman started him straight away without any ado. Paddy is only about a month in this country and he has no experience of this work but he’s a good strong fellow and he won’t be long learning. He was at college at home until recently and then he spent a while teaching until life drove him over here. It’s a poor life for the likes of him and I think he’d go off home again if he could. Well, good enough, he was left with me for the day and I showed him as best I could how to handle the shovels and one thing and another.

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