A “Gandy Dance” fundraiser celebrates railroad crews of a bygone era

The Historical Society of Dayton Valley’s Carson & Colorado Railroad  Depot Committee held a  “Gandy Dance” October 19 to raise funds for the continuing restoration of the 1880 Carson and Colorado Railroad Road Depot located at the intersection of Main Street and US50E in Old Town Dayton.

Since the event was Saturday, I do not have information about the outcome of the gathering because my deadline was on Friday; yet, I want to write the history behind the “Gandy Dance” fundraiser.

What is a gandy dancer?

I believe the majority of people who have read the signs advertising the event are thinking like I am: “What the heck is a “gandy dance?” So, I did research to learn that the event’s name is a play on words that honors the “gandy dancers,” railroad workmen in the earliest railroading days in U.S. history. Over the years, the gandy dancers’ era has become a romanticized part of railroading history. Gandy dancers worked railroads long before mechanized equipment did the manual labor work and they were part of large crews of men hired to do the hard physical labor of keeping the trains running long distances on safely maintained tracks.

Today, the gandy dancers of yesterday are known as “section workers,” and like their historic counterparts, they keep the railroad rights-of-way in tact by repairing tracks such as laying, spreading, and tamping ballast, replacing rails, hammering spikes, placing tie-plats, setting new ties or doing whatever else is necessary to keep the trains running efficiently.

But the gandy dancer’s tools of yesterday differed substantially from what railroad workmen use today. For instance, a section worker today would rarely use heavy metal tools like tie tongs, tamping bars, claw bars, picks, shovels, lining bar, rail tongs or other manually-handled tools.

Instead,  today’s railroad crews utilize expensive computerized and heavy construction equipment that expedites the maintenance of the thousands of miles of railway lines, including back-hoes, undercutters, surface machines, ballast regulators and spike inserters.

American railroading industry began in the 1820’s

Manual labor by gandy dancers began in the 1820’s and continued for around a century across the U.S.  Although these manual laborers received the lowest pay of any profession then, tens of thousands of immigrants and former slaves were glad to have the jobs and the laborers included Africans, Mexicans, the Irish and Chinese. After federal laws were passed to restrict Chinese immigration in the 1880’s, more European immigrants joined the railroad maintenance construction crews when rail was laid across the mid to western part of the U.S.

Gandy dancers earned their name

Historians are not certain when some of the railroad workmen were first called gandy dancers. The name might have originated from the Gandy Tool Company that manufactured tools or the Gaelic word “gandy” and then “dancer” due to the repetitive words and motions the men made to relieve the long hours of continuously driving spikes into wooden ties or while working other routine, grueling jobs that kept the railroads running. However, the term was commonly heard by the late 18th Century.

The chants, songs, tunes and melodies remain a part of American folklore and the Gandy Dancers’ Ball written by Frank Laine was well-known as late as 1951, as was Moose Turd Pie by Bruce Phillips and The Ventures sang the Gandy Dancer in 1962. Chinese and European section workers also laid plenty of rail across the Sierra Nevada, Carson City, Reno, Dayton and Lyon County beginning around 1869.

Gandy dancers in the 1980’s and the magic of trains

I took a photography class at UNR in the mid-1980’s. One of the class assignments included a field trip to Truckee, where we were to find a photo story. I chose to photograph railroad workers and talked to the employees at the Truckee Depot to learn that workmen were replacing railroad ties on the track in the Sierra Nevada above Chrystal Springs off of Interstate 80. Days later, I drove to the site, hiked up to and along the track until I found the crew. And, yes, they had modern equipment, but the manual laborers still worked hard to help remove and lay the new ties that are covered with stinky black creosote that rubbed off onto their clothes and hands.  

The workmen could not believe I had walked up the mountain to find them and they treated me respectfully while I snapped many working-men photos, including black and whites, and received an “A” for the project!

I will never forget this summer day, especially when a freight train slowly chugged up the short grade on the rails adjacent to the workmen and the engineer blew the whistle that echoed through the pine trees, where the men had stopped work, held their tools and stood quietly, like in reverence, as the train passed.

Like a child, passing trains and the sound of the whistle seems somewhat magical to me.

Laura Tennant is a Silver City, Nevada native, Dayton historian and the Leader-Courier’s former editor. Comments are welcomed. Call 775-246-03256, e-mail L10ant38@gmail.com or write P.O. Box 143, Dayton, NV 89403