Winter Track Work

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. SNOW. One of the first results of frost or freezing weather is snow, usually only a few flakes during the first days of early winter. These seem harmless enough, but the trackman of experience in a northern climate takes grave notice of these wintry messengers, and prepares for the long struggle. He well knows that however good his track may ride in late fall, it will be rough enough before spring and that he must stand by, day after day, through the long winter season and see it go from smooth to rough without power to prevent. He knows that these scattering snow flakes "a moment seen, then gone forever" are the forerunners of the deep snowfall, of the swirling drift of midwinter, and of the hard banks of sandy, icy snow that must be shoveled off and loosened with a pick "when the days begin