The railroad tracklayer is now working along regularly at the rate of a
mile a day. The machine is a car 60 feet long and 10 feet wide. It has
a small engine on board for handling the ties and rails. The ties are
carried on a common freight car behind, and conveyed by an endless chain
over the top of the machinery, laid down in their places on the track,
and, when enough are laid, a rail is put down on each side in proper
position and spiked down. The tracklayer then advances, and keeps on its
work until the load of ties and rails is exhausted, when other car loads
are brought. The machine is driven ahead by a locomotive, and the work
is done so rapidly that 60 men are required to wait on it, but they do
more work than twice as many could do by the old system, and the work is
done quite as well. The chief contractor of the road gives it as his
opinion that when the machine is improved by making a few changes in the
method of handling rails and ties it will be able to put down five or six
miles per day. This will render it possible to lay down track twelve
times as fast as the usual rate by hand, and it will do the work at less
expense. The invention will be of immense importance to the country in
connection with the Pacific railroad, which it was calculated could be
built as fast as the track could be laid, and no faster; but hereafter
the speed will be determined by the grading, which cannot advance more
than five miles a day. Thirty millions of dollars have already been
invested on the Pacific railroad, and if the time of completion is
hastened one year by this tracklayer, as it will be if Central and Union
Companies have money enough to grade each five miles a day, there will be
a saving of three million dollars on interest alone on that one road.
—_Alla California_, 1868.