Track looks tough. In reality it is a wonderfully sensitive thing. Not only is the rail itself a sensitive and uncertain thing, whether it weighs 56 pounds to the yard or 110 pounds to the yard, but the ballast and the ties, and even the spikes, must be in absolute order or something is going to happen, before long, to some train that goes rolling over them. A large percentage of railroad accidents, charged to the account of the failure of mechanism, is due to this very thing. Therefore the maintenance of track alone--to say nothing of bridges, culverts, switches, and signals--becomes from the very beginning a very vital, although little understood, feature of railroad operation. Here then is the floor-plan of the job of the man who stands there beside the track as you go whizzing by and who salutes you joyously as you toss a morning paper over the brass rail. His own facilities for getting newspapers are rather limited. He is a type--a man typical, if you please--of 400,000 of his fellows who make the track safe for you. The brigadiers general of this sturdy corps of railroaders are the engineers of the maintenance of way. A very large road will boast several executives of this title, reporting in all probability to a chief engineer of maintenance. Reporting to these from each superintendent's division is a division engineer--probably some chap out of Tech who is getting his first view of railroading at extremely short range. He, in turn, will have his assistants; but he is probably placing his chief reliance on his track supervisors. Now we are coming much closer to the man whom you see standing there beside your train. These track supervisors are the field-rangers of maintenance. Each is in charge of from ten to twelve sections, which probably will mean from eighty to one hundred miles of single-track--much less in the case of double-or three-or four-track railroads. The section has its own lieutenant--section foreman he is rated on the railroad's pay-roll; but in its lore he will ever be the section-boss, and boss of the section he must be indeed. If ever there was need of an autocrat in the railroad service, it is right here; and yet, as we shall presently see, even the section-boss must learn to temper his authority with finesse and with tact. Here, then, is our man with the shovel. Suppose that, for this instant, the limited grinds to a stop, and you climb down to him and see the railroad as he sees it. Underneath him are four or six or eight workers--perhaps an assistant of some sort or other. Over him are the supervisors and above them those smart young engineers who can figure out track with lines and pothooks, though the section-boss is never sure that his keen eye and unfailing intuition are not better than all those books which the college boys keep tucked under their arms.