[(E)]

Speaking of Navvys

A 'good hand' among early canal cutters could dig twelve cubic yards of easy earth a day — eighteen tons, or perhaps the space taken up by a large single-decker bus; a place big enough to set up house in. But that was easy compared to what came later. On the early railways a single navvy was expected to fill seven wagons a day. (In [56/57] fact they worked in pairs. Two were expected to fill a set, or train, of fourteen wagons between them). To do so each man lifted twenty tons over his head.*Sometimes*a pair of men filled sixteen wagons a day and even then the best of them were in the ale house by late afternoon. 'The men, who are the finest workmen in Europe,' said Hekekyan Bey, 'dig out twenty-five cubic yards of heavy clay each day — but their desire to run to the public houses and get drunk is so great that many of them perform their day's work in a few hours.'

Source
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/...ullivan/7.html

Edit, on a side note I have worked on a farm were they used explosives to make drains and clear dams.