In 1960, looking west from the Texas and Pacific freight yard in El Paso, Texas, you’d see the lines of the rails curving off to the north, towards the city buildings and smokestacks in the distance. In the yard, after an engine gave a rail car a push on its way, workers might uncouple the car and let it roll under its own momentum down the way, or simply release a brake to start it in motion. During the day and the night, children from the neighboring houses would find their way into the yard, along with itinerant workers and drifters. Cars and trucks following Tornillo Street, a public road, across the dozen or so rails in the yard, might find heavy train cars traveling straight towards them or blocking their way.

For the men working on the trains, it felt like a dangerous situation. The photos shown here were taken by engineers and other rail workers on tracks across the country, in an effort to prove how hazardous these places could be and to show why cutting crews was a terrible idea.