On Fri, 30 Oct 1998, Wesley Groot the tall galoot wrote:

> Alright! Welcome Mr. North to the porch! On behalf of those of us
> who are fortunate enough to have a computer and a few Galootish tools,
> but are unfortunate in that we don't know offhand what the practice of
> "gandy dancing" entails;
>    What is gandy dancing? Oh yeah, and what's a black gang?

Gandy dancing was an extremely galootish activity.  It was a practise used
on the railroads in days of yore in which a gang of laborers would be
sent out along the tracks to check for the alignment of the rails.  The
men would use large pry bars to move the tracks laterally in their
beds of crushed rock.  The pry bars were reputedly manufactured by, you
guessed it, the Gandy Co., hence gandy dancers.  One man alone could not
budge the tracks, but the men would work in concert, usually to some sort
of chanted rhythm (kinda like Bill Murray in Stripes).  The force the
men would apply to the rails was usually done at certain parts of the
verses that the foreman was chanting.  These guys were able to move
70-120 lb rails this way.  The rail inspectors would use the gandy dancers
to fix alignment of the tracks in the curves.  Misaligned tracks in curves
are a bad thing, very bad.

If you get a chance, Wes, go to an ACE hardware or farm supply store and
look at the pinch bars that are available.  These are 5 ft. variations on
the pry bars the gandy dancers would use.  Think of a crow bar on massive
steroids.

Railroads, for the most part, did away with the dancers in favor of
maintainence-of-way machines.  These are the oddly shaped, purpose built
machines used to aline and respike tracks.  Fascinating pieces of
industrial design and construction.

Lee Sudlow