'''Gandy dancer''' is a Slang term for workers who maintained Railroads in North America.
The term originates from the mid to late 19th_century. It is often said to derive from the Gandy Shovel Company, a Chicago-based tool manufacturing company, but several sources cite an absence of any record of this company's existence. Hand crews used specialized hand tools known as ''gandys'' (of unknown Etymology) to Lever Rail_tracks into position.
Though rail tracks were held in place by wooden ties (''sleepers'' outside the USA) and the mass of the stones (''ballast'') beneath them, each pass of a train around a corner would, through Centrifugal_force and vibration, produce a tiny shift in the tracks. If allowed to accumulate, such shifts could eventually cause a derailment; work crews had to pry them back into place routinely.
For each stroke, a worker would lift his gandy and force it into the ballast to create a Fulcrum, then throw himself sideways using the gandy to check his full weight (making the "huh" sound recorded in the lyrics below) so the gandy would push the rail toward the inside of the curve. Even with all impacts from the work crew timed correctly, any progress made in shifting the track would not become visible until a large number of repetitions.
Rhythm was necessary for this process, both to synchronise the manual labor, and to maintain the morale of workers whose exertions produced only a minuscule effect; hence "gandy dancers". The songs sung in this occupation have been recognized as a major influence on later Blues music; two such songs are reproduced below.
The same ground crews also performed the other aspects of track maintenance, removing weeds, tamping down ballast, and replacing rotten sleepers. The British equivalent is "Navvy" from "Navigator", originally builders of canals or "inland navigations".
==Typical song lyrics==
:Pick an' shovel...huh,
:am so heavy...huh,
:Heavy as lead...huh,
:heavy as lead...huh
:Pickin', shov'lin'...huh
:pickin', shov'lin'...huh
:Till I'm dead...huh
:till I'm dead...
Category:Rail_transport
==References==
*Music history and comments on the labor.
*Notes on the term's origin.