ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW

E. C. Honath

Assistant Roadmaster Temple.

Russell: Then you worked as Assistant Roadmaster.

Honath: I relived a roadmaster at Temple, it was as Assistant Roadmaster. We were using an undertrack plow a different type than we have now.

Russell: Was that the Santa Fe plow.

Honath: Yes the Santa Fe plow I was in on the use of the Madson plow over here as a roadway assistant.

Russell: The Madison plow what was that?

Honath: Mr. Madson always claimed to have invented the undertrack plow, but the Santa Fe had developed and used its own plow. I remember one of the Madison plows had a bunch of roller bearings on the top skid. And it didn't make. We were plowing cinders near Suddan I do not think the plow lasted a mile. The Roller bearings were fine but the cinders overcame the quality of the roller bearings.

Russell: Mr. Madson was he with another railroad?

Honath: No, he was a private individual that invented equipment.

Russell: Was this piece of machinery that set under the track?

Honath: It was basically the same kind of plow as the Santa Fe's plow. The Santa Fe plow was a short plow in fact it had two runners up their that were hard faced welded in fact we used to do much of are own welding then. Hard face those as they wear. The Madson plow for instance there were many plow some fancier were you could use hydraulics to vary the blades and all that. But basically the simple plow was the best. In fact even today it might be a very economical thing if you could get the track time. We could plow about a mile a day and put in 400 ties the gangs were smaller just 2 machine operators and 30 laborers. For instance on the Southern District transcontinental main line of the Santa Fe Wellington to Belen in 3 half to 4 hours of track time we could plow 1800 feet and remove the ties and put the track back and did do it and probably that may well have been the cheapest it was done.

Russell: you said 37 men and two machine operators?

Honath: 30 men and two machine operators. The way you operated it then you used Indian gangs. You pulled your tie car right behind your plow hook on with a cable take the knuckle out and through the pin pull with as I recall an inch and half cable and you would set the breaks so the car would drag slow. You would put about 4 men up in the tie car to throw off ties You would have six to knock off ties up front and the rest of the gang was behind inserting ties lining tack putting plates on and restoring the track. The only real equipment that was used was the little clee track that had an arm on it was a D4 or R4 tractor.

Russell: Dozer type of thing?

Honath: Right except it didn't have a blade on it and it had a hydraulic arm on it and was built by the Santa Fe and he would come along and line the track. You would use a power jack to raise the rail if you could not get the tie under it. It worked very will it. It was more a hand operation. The thing is that they do not have people anymore that want to do that kind of work any more. It was hard work. If you were on the main line you would plow in the morning and skeltonize switch or something like that in the afternoon.

Russell: They right plowed through the swithces with this?

Honath: No we hand skelotonizee the switches. That was a separate operation but we used the same gang for it.

Russell: Another words you dug out the cribs of the switch by hand and changed the ties by hand.

Honath: All the switches were done by hand and all the ties by hand. In between it was a very successful operation if you came to an open deck bridge you used a burro crane to set the plow around.

Russell: How did you get the plow in and out of the track.

Honath: We did about the same we do it now we used a dozer. No that not the we do it know. You jack the track up with big bridge jacks and use a dozer to push it under and then take it out in like manner.

Russell: Real interesting that what you were doing when you were covering for the roadmaster. Covering the territory and running this plow gang.

Honath: Yes. We used an inferior type of ballast in those days compared to what we use now.

Russell: What type of ballast did you have at that time in common use in the territories you are familiar with.

Honath: Well it varied in different places. But the territories I am familiar with we used that Brownwood limestone and Brownwood screenings. The Brownwood rock was a very inferior and soft rock The screening were almost powder when you dumped it. You would end up with your mouth completely coated on the inside it was like you had cement. It was terrible stuff to use and we of course used dority rock which is a dolemight or lime stone. We did use slag from Pueblo, which is probably as good as every thing short of the better igneous rock of today. But it is pretty good.

Russell: What areas did this type of rock cover did they overlap?

Honath: We did not haul the rock a long ways. The haul was one of the big problems. The Brownwood ballast was pretty much used between Sweetwater and Temple and some down toward Galveston. The Dourty was used from Purcell to Galveston. Up here at Amarillo we used slag on the main line they also used ballast from a quarry near Sias New Mexico and we used volcanic cinder ballast between Texico and Slaton.

Russell: Were did the Cinders come from?

Honath: Woulnona

Transcribed in altered from for the Web By Russell Crump

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