Fair Skies or Foul.

They steal a march on dawn, these men, and are on the job before the earliest bird has caught its worm: 6 a.m. They relieve the all-night gang, who have worked on a shift system since 10 o'clock the previous evening. These latter are full ready for rest. If the night has been rough, their experience can be described by the same adjective. In winter, even the morning gang have to work in the dark for a couple of hours.

Outside, the blackness, the cold. Working in squelching boots, in slippery oilskins shining like moonlight on a black sea. With not a few curses and lots of grit. Maybe a southerly blowing free. Numb, chapped hands, swinging a lantern like some Diogenes in search of the truth—the truth of the night, the lay of the tracks, the safety and the danger. But with not even a barrel to creep into, like Diogenes, if the elements are too rough.

Some work can wait for fairer skies, but not the work of the shunter. A schedule of trains, clear tracks, waiting transports, the reputation of the Raildays, depend on their expedition in “breaking up” trains newly arrived, in marshalling the units of others outward bound, in getting ahead with their job.

The days of the world's prosperity are the hardest days for the shunting gangs—when loaded, endless trains come rocking down hill and countryside along the iron trail, bearing burdens of New Zealand's produce for overseas, and then go rocking back again with freights of merchandise in ultimate exchange. Heavy goods, these, adding hundreds of tons to the work of the shunter, as well as danger, because necessity decrees all speed.