gandy dancer

noun, esp. US, a railway maintenance worker (COD)

“Like the old train wreck songs, and when steamboats would crash and go up on land, they’d write a song about it. Those gandy dancers that they had on the railroad as they were working they’d always — I think the songs were made up before they started swinging sledges — but it was always disrespect to their boss anyway or the boss’s wife.”