Alexander Anderson (1845-1909) was a Scottish poet. In 1862, he became a surfaceman or platelayer on the Glasgow and South-western railway, and generally wrote under the name of Surfaceman. Spending all his leisure in self-culture, he mastered German, French, and Spanish sufficiently to read the chief masterpieces in these languages. In 1870, he began to send verses to the People"s Friend of Dundee, and subsequently his fist book A Song of Labour and Other Poems was published in 1873. Amongst his other works are The Two Angels and Other Poems (1875), Songs of the Rail (1878) and Ballads and Sonnets (1879).