Gandy dancers follow the inserter/extractor along the railroad tracks from Jim Thorpe south, removing aging wooden ties marked for extraction and replacing them with new ones. The railroad ties, or sleepers, hold the rails a set distance apart, called a gauge. The gauge on this rail is between 56-1/2 and 56-3/4-inches, measured from inside the rails.

W. E. Yoder, Inc., a railroad maintenance company out of Kutztown that repairs track from Scranton to Cape May was hired by the Reading Blue Mountain Railroad to upgrade ties in this section as part of its as preventive maintenance program.

According to Ray Geist, an equipment operator who runs an inserter/extractor for Yoder, an inspector selects and marks the ties that need to be replaced. Usually it is every fourth or fifth tie.

A crew comes through and removes the spikes. Then a track mounted crane pulling a wagon loaded with replacement 8-1/2-foot long 7 x 9-inch creosoted ties passes over the tracks, depositing a tie outside of each marked tie.

Then Geist drives his track-mounted inserter/extractor to the first marked tie. He lowers the hydraulic column and jaws grab onto the top of the two rails. Then, he lowers the jackstand to the rail bed. This action raises the tracks, and the inserter/extractor mounted on them, above the rail bed—high enough to separate the rail from the ties that have been freed of their captive spikes.

Using another hydraulic arm, the machine grabs and removes the old tie and sets it aside and slides a new tie into place. The railroad workers, or gandy dancers as they had been known a century ago when either: they used Gandy tools, tapped a rhythm as they spiked the rails together, or squatted like a goose when laying the heavy ties—followed the inserter/extractor. Today’s railroad crew shoveled the chopped stone back into place after the tie was placed.

Later the crane returns to remove the old ties, and finally a spiking machine does what the old time gandy dancers were best known to install.