Tink, I recall also your comment above, about how hard the handcar would be on someone's back...and probably until my own generation, brutally hard work was really common, I think...the physical exertion (and pain) those folks would endure as a matter of course, and never think twice about it.
I remember my mother talking about trying to keep my father home from work once when he had flu or something, of course no sick leave in those days...and she came in, and there he was reading the newspaper, claiming to feel better, going to go to work tomorrow! Then she realized it was all a show for her, because he was holding the newspaper upside down.
If someone got killed on a logging operation in the woods, that was no reason to slow production, you just loaded the fellow on the barge and took him in at the end of the day.