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The two fish-plates are put in their place at the same time, the second rivet being held in place with one finger, while the first is being riveted with a hammer; if it is not kept in its place in this manner it may be impossible to put it in afterward, as the blows of the hammer often cause the fish-plate to shift, and the holes in the rail are pierced with great precision to prevent there being too much clearance.
In order to facilitate as much as possible the repairs in such cases, the fish-plates are not riveted by machinery, but by hand; and it is only necessary to cut the rivets with which the fish-plate is fastened, and remove it if broken: A drill passed through the two holes of the rail removes all burrs that may be in the way of the new rivet.
He made four trips the first day and at dusk had the satisfaction of beholding many tons of rails, fish-plates and spikes unloaded and neatly piled in the yarding place at the Spinnaker end of the carry. Between trips, while the men were unloading, he had opportunity to extend his right-of-way lines for his swampers and attend to other details of his engineering problem.
The men were busy pumping, the "management" inspecting the fish-plates, the culverts, and, incidentally, watching the red sun slide down behind the trees. At the foot of a long slope, down which the men had been pumping with all their might, there was a short bridge. The forest was heavy here, and already the shadow of the woods lay over the right-of-way.
Native lads, some in their early teens, clothed with little beyond a sense of their own importance and "army ammunition boots," many sizes too big for their feet, adjusted the fish-plates and put on the screw nuts.
The ends of the rails were not japanned, but were electroplated, to give good contact surfaces for fish-plates and copper bonds." The following notes of Mr. Frederick A. Scheffler, who designed the passenger locomotive for the 1882 road, throw an interesting light on its technical details: "In May, 1881, I was engaged by Mr.
The foreman instantly gauged them, the horse moved ahead, and thirty spikers armed with heavy mauls drove the spikes furiously and regularly, three strokes to the spike, into the new-laid ties. The bolters followed with the fish-plates, and while Bucks looked the railroad was made before his eyes. The excitement of the scene was unforgettable. In less than sixty seconds four rails had gone down.
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