engineering company of the railway battalion. His company has two track maintenance platoons, each of which
consists of a headquarters section and three maintenance sections. In charge of each section is a track supervisor
who directs the work of his gang foreman and 18 other enlisted men. Two other platoons in the company carry
out maintenance duties in connection with bridges and structures and with communications and railway signals.
The maintenance work is distributed as evenly as possible, but this does not mean that a railroad is
divided into equal sections with an equal number of men assigned to each section. The varying degrees of effort
and skill required in maintaining curves, turnouts, crossings, and sidings must be taken into account, because a
kilometer of main-line track containing many of these characteristics presents a much greater maintenance
problem than does a kilometer without them. Maintenance work should be well planned; a program of continued
maintenance is more desirable than one based on remedying weaknesses where and when they appear.
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