Another day of a trans-continental journey aboard The Canadian is fast fading into an autumn sunset. The silhouette of a nameless mileboard zips past at a mile a minute. Ahead, a pair of CTC signals, green over red, herald the approach to one of the hundreds of passing tracks along the CP Rail right-of-way. As the diesels thunder by the signal posts, the lone green light turns to red also and, in a few seconds, these two ruby eyes flash by the dome car and are lost to the impending night behind.

At the far end of the passing track stands another pair of signals, guarding the lonely track beyond. Once again a green changes to red, the signals flash by and recede into the darkness.

In those 60 seconds that 20 car train has passed some $98,000 worth of ballast, steel rails, fastenings, ties, switches, and signalling equipment. How many passengers would know, for example, that the steel rails alone in that mile of track are worth over $29,000? Few people would realize the price tag on a power-operated switch, over $7,000 (and to that add another $6,000 for a switch heater for winter operations).

A tie is worth better than $5. Even the simple rail anchor comes in at 50 cents, and on new rail installations there are up to 8,000 per mile.

With 22,670 miles of track under their jurisdiction, it's little wonder, then, that CP Rail's maintenance of way people take their job pretty seriously.

At first glance, the huge rails and massive ties along a mainline track might seem almost indestructible. But, watch them at close range, as a 150-car freight, with a gross weight of perhaps 12,000 tons, thunders past, 65 miles an hour behind five huge diesel units, and the picture changes somewhat.

Says Charlie King, supervisor, maintenance of way, at Winnipeg:  "In some places in the mountain divisions our heaviest rails last less than three years. We even have washboard effects on our rails, the same sort of thing you get on country gravel roads." Curves must be elevated to suit the speed of the fastest train. Slower trains, usually with heavier tonnage, tend to "corrugate" the surface of the lower rail of an elevated curve, whilst the upper one will show another form of deterioration called "side head wear."

Do some train-watching and follow the movement of the rail joints as the wheels hit them. Up and down they go, not only the rails, but also the ties nearest the joint. The result, the ends of the rails get damaged with the motion, beaten down and rounded at their ends. The ties wear out and the ballast below is displaced or damaged.

It may be music to the ears of rail lovers the world over, but to maintenance of way engineers that clickety-clack of wheels passing over rail joints is something they are anything but sentimental about. Battered ends have to be periodically built up by welding, with two ends per joint that means some 560 welds per mile, plus replacement of ties where the up-and-down motion has wrecked the wood. Then, once these repairs are done, rails must be brought up to a uniform level by a process called surfacing.

Stated in its simplest terms, the less clickety-clack, the less wear, which, explains Cecil Colpitts, Canadian Pacific's chief engineer, is why CP Rail's long-range track modernization program places strong emphasis on the use of continuous welded rail (CWR). In lengths of 1,440 feet, CWR means about 14 joints to the mile versus about 280 with 39 foot long standard rail.

CWR solves many of the railway's track maintenance problems. So also, to a lesser degree, do the welded short (78 foot) lengths whereby bolted joints are offset against welded ones, the latter process particularly favored for use in the mountain divisions with their many curves and resultant rail wear. (It is a maintenance of way procedure to exchange the locations of upper rails with lower ones on curves, thus increasing their overall life by utilizing both sides. Making the transfer is easier with shorter welded lengths.)

Since the beginning of the year, a special mobile welding plant (see accompanying story next week) has been in operation turning out welded lengths of 78 foot and 1,440 foot rail for use in all four regions of the system. During the winter and summer it operated under the direction of W.F.H. Pollock at Winnipeg's North Transcona yards. Now, along with the technicians operating it, the plant is at Smiths Falls, Ontario.

The underlying reason for the decision to operate on a portable basis lies in the problem of transportation, getting the finished quarter-mile lengths of track quickly to the desired location along the right-of-way. The farther the plant, the more specially designed trains required to haul the finished product. The portable plant operating close to the job at hand calls for only two such trains.

Teamwork, and a gentle hand on the throttle, are vital as a rail laying train inches across the narrow bridge over Illecillewaet River in the Selkirk Mountains near Flat Creek - Date unknown Nicholas Morant.

The rail unloading trains consist of 30 specially made flat cars which carry four rows of 10 rails. Each length of rail is about 1,440 feet long and they stand in rack formation individually anchored in the middle to prevent getting loose in transit, "like stepping on a snake in the middle and letting both ends wiggle."

In movement between welding plant and the laying location, two "buffer" hopper cars filled with gravel, are placed immediately behind the diesels and in front of the caboose to provide crew protection. Further safety precautions call for a senior rail official to ride with the train at all times and it has a 30 mph speed restriction.

When the train nears the destination specified for new rail, the locomotives are moved to the rear of the train after they have taken the forward hopper car into a sidetrack. On their way, they pick up two special flat cars which are placed immediately ahead of the "power" and behind the rail train itself.

The two new cars are known as the rail unloading car and threader car, the latter is immediately ahead of the locomotives and is equipped with a winch. Cable is drawn from the winch-drum and attached to the end of a length of rail on the rack. It is then withdrawn toward the rear of the train, passing over rollers and through "threaders" to a point where the rail is now hanging a few feet off the ground beside the train. This action is repeated on the opposite side a few minutes later.

Next, two anchor plates are attached to the tracks, one on each side, and to each is attached a length of measured cable. The cables are now attached to the rail ends and the rest is simple. Given the "go ahead slowly" order, the engineer simply pushes his train from underneath the two anchored lengths of rail and they neatly drop down onto the ballast beside the tracks.

It is an amazing sight to a layman to see a quarter of a mile of 130 pound rail being handled as if it were a piece of spaghetti. In this manner rail can be dropped at about five miles an hour on a good straight stretch and the capacity of a CWR "work extra" provides about 5 1/2 track miles of steel.

The unloading process is the same whether the rail is in continuous welded lengths or the shorter 78 foot sections. In the case of the latter, they are temporarily bolted together in lengths of 1,248 feet and unloaded at destination in the same way as CWR.

An interesting feature of these "work extras" is that their crews are drawn from the regular section gangs working the immediate localities. No teams of specialists are required. If one looks over the lists of Roadmasters Louis Rota, Ralph Rimstad, John Mascetti, Glyn Welsch, or Eric Perrett, the names of many "old faithfuls" from along Canadian Pacific's right-of-way can be found. There's Peter Binda, Joe Medine, Kalla Nikola, and his buddy Reino Tikkanen, Nick Kubay, and Oscar Buser, Stefan Strezelbicki, Mike Pescitelli, Ivan Matuli, Fernando Savone, Pete Hnatiuk, Sebastiano Diclamente, and Ed Riench. There are many other players on the team but, as everyone knows, the sportswriters can't mention them all, even if they played a good game.

Wherever men get together on a job of work, there is seldom an instance where one does not encounter some form of humour, unconscious or otherwise. Frank Defoe, a company mechanic from Revelstoke, operating the winch on the threader car laying track east of Golden, B.C., seemed to be in 16 places at once as the train made its way up the Kicking Horse Canyon. An enthusiastic, effective, and exuberant worker, he may be heard loud and clear at all times. His language, when he encounters a snag, is not that usually heard at the church picnic.

On one occasion, working in the tortuous curves of the canyon he had really run into trouble. He was stalled inside a tunnel. A trainman, equipped with two-way radio, hovered beside Frank at all times to relay instructions to the engineer. The diesels stood just outside the tunnel mouth, and, up there in the semidarkness was Frank Defoe, working out his problems, his voice reverberating out of the tunnel and into the locomotive cab as if he were in a sounding box. Things were, very obviously, not going too well in there.

"Tell that cock-eyed hoghead back there to get off his fat behind and show us a little blankety action. Tell him if we don't get up another five feet we're gonna bust this whole blankety-blank rig..."

This monologue must ever remain hidden beneath a mossy stone. But, the laugh came, when Engineer A.G. Gullickson's train radio came to life and the voice of the young trainman filled the cab with the official version, censored beyond the call of duty that CP Rail might not lose its Department of Transport licence to send and receive messages.

"Work Extra 8666, move forward five feet, real easy."