Railroad Workers (Adzing for Tie Plates)

Many paintings in the Museum collection depict industrial advancement and highlight expansion and prosperity. These themes often surround the spectacle of the expanding railroad, connecting industry with the countryside as local populations bear witness to a time of great progress for their town and region.

This progress, of course, does not come without great toil, like that on display in Leonhard Sandrock’s Railroad Workers (Adzing for Tie Plates). This scene of railroad construction was produced by one of the masters of German industrial painting. In this painting, two four-man crews are alternating work and rest cycles, providing for constant adzing of the twin tracks shown. An adz is similar to an axe but with an arched blade at a right angle to the handle. Railroad ties are adzed to provide a smooth and level surface for the mounting of tie plates, and subsequently rails.

Sandrock painted at a time when ties were manually worked in preparation for applying the plates. This operation was later replaced by the work of an adzing machine, like the Nordberg Mobile Milling Machine, developed in Milwaukee in 1928. A significant contribution to our local industrial history, it was the first self-powered machine for roadway maintenance and established Milwaukee as a pioneer of railroad equipment and service. In viewing the backbreaking work captured in the painting, it seems it would only be a matter of time that the mechanical engineer would develop an efficient alternative.