Track Workers - HO Scale

A track crew at hand maintenance of the permanent way

One of the men holds the rail spike with his bare hands while his colleague swings a spike maul above him. It is a picture that lasted in photographs of track crews for almost a hundred years and that catches very exactly how the permanent way was maintained before tamping machines came to the line.

The rest of the crew round the work out on the roadbed. Two men work with pickaxes, one with his tool high above his head at the moment before it falls, and two more are shoveling. Dividing them between two tasks gives the scene a natural rhythm, because each pair moves at a different speed.

On a layout a scene like this belongs at a stretch of track under work: at a place where the ballast has been torn out, where spare ties lie beside the track or where a freight car stands by with material. Beside a turnout the crew looks especially convincing, because it was exactly there that hand work lasted the longest.

The figure with its tool raised above the head is the most striking of the whole group and should stand so that its silhouette does not overlap anything in the background. Above the level of the rails you will see it well against the sky, whereas in front of the dark wall of a warehouse it is lost.

The designation HO is written in numbers as 1:87. The figures can be used away from the track as well, at the building of a road or a sewer, because the tools they hold are not specifically railroad ones, with the exception of the spike maul and the spike.

A spike maul differs from an ordinary hammer in the length of its handle and in its head, and on a silhouette the difference is clearly visible. The pair at the spike can therefore be made out even from a greater distance, which is an advantage with castings this small.