THE BUILDING OF A RAILROAD
COST OF A SINGLE-TRACK ROAD--FINANCING--SECURING A CHARTER--SURVEY-WORK
AND ITS DANGERS--GRADES--CONSTRUCTION--TRACK-LAYING.
The railroad has its beginning in the inspiration and in the imagination
of men. Perchance a great tract of country, rich in possibilities, stands
undeveloped for lack of transportation facilities. The living arm of the
railroad will bring to it both strength and growth. It will bring to it
the materials, the men, and the machinery needed for its development. It
will take from it its products seeking markets in communities already
established.
In that way the first railroads began, reaching their arms carefully in
from the Atlantic and the navigable rivers and bays that emptied into it.
In the beginning there was hardly any inland country. All the important
towns were spread along the sea-coast or along those same navigable
tributaries, and it was sorry shrift for any community that did not
possess a wharf to which vessels of considerable tonnage might attain.
Where such communities did not possess natural water-ways, they sought to
obtain artificial ones; and the result was the extraordinary impetus that
was given to the building of canals during the first half of the
nineteenth century--a page of American industrial history that has been
told in another chapter.
It was found quite impossible to handle bulky freight economically by
wagon, no matter how romantic the turnpike might be for passenger traffic
in the old-time coaches. The canal was so much better as a carrier that it
was hailed with acclaim, and waxed powerful. In the height of its power
it laughed at the puny efforts of the railroad, and then, as you have
seen, sought by every possible means to throttle the growth of the steel
highway. Within eighty years it was powerless, and the railroad was
conqueror. There were hundreds of miles of abandoned canal within the
country, many of them being converted into roadbeds of railroads; and the
water-highway, with its slow transit and its utter helplessness during the
frozen months of the year, was not able to exist except where quantities
of the coarsest sort of freight were to be moved.
Without railroads, the United States to-day would, in all probability, not
be radically different from the United States of a hundred years ago. All
the large towns and cities would still be clustered upon the coast and
waterways, and back of them would still rest many, many square miles of
undeveloped country; the nation would have remained a sprawling, helpless
thing, weakened by its very size, and subject both to internal conflict
and to attacks of foreign invaders. It has been repeatedly said that if
there had been a through railroad development in the South during the
fifties, there would have been no Civil War. France for five hundred years
before the signing of our Declaration, was a civilized and progressive
nation. Yet century after century passed without her inland towns showing
material change; and her seaports, lacking the impetus of interior growth,
remained quiescent. Such a metropolis as Marseilles is to-day, became
possible only when the railroad made this seaport the south gate of a
mightily developing nation.
* * * * *
Let us assume that we are about to build a railroad. If we are going to
strike our road in from some existing line or some accessible port into
virgin country, we may hope for land or money grants from the State,
county, town, or city Government. That is a faint hope, however, in these
piping days of the twentieth century. So much scandal once attached itself
to these grants that they have become all but obsolete. We shall have to
fall back upon the individual enterprise and help of the persons who are
to benefit by the coming of the railroad. They may be folk who simply
regard our project as a good investment, and place their money in it with
hopes of a fair return.
Even if we are not going into virgin territory to give whole townships and
counties their first sight of the locomotive, but are going to strike into
a community already provided with railroad facilities but seemingly
offering fair opportunity for profit in a competitive traffic, we shall
find capital ready to stand back of us. A railroad will cost much money,
the mere cost of single-track construction generally running far in excess
of $35,000 a mile; and it should have resources, particularly in a highly
competitive territory, to enable it to carry on a losing fight at the
first.
For the money it receives it will issue securities, upon incorporation and
legal organization, almost invariably in the form of capital stock and of
mortgage-bonds. The stock will probably be held by the men who wish to
control the construction and the operation of the line; the bonds will be
issued to those persons who invest their money in it, either for profit or
as an aid to the community it seeks to enter. The bonds are, in almost all
cases, the preferable security. They pay a guaranteed interest at a
certain rate, and at the end of a designated term of years they are
redeemable at face value, in cash or in the capital stock of the company.
There are other forms of loan obligations which the railroad
issues--debenture bonds, second-mortgage bonds, short-term notes, and the
like. To enter upon a description of these would mean a detour into the
devious highways and byways of railroad finance--an excursion which we
have no desire to make in this book.
In building our line we will issue as few bonds in proportion to our stock
as will make our company fairly stable in organization, and its
proposition attractive to investors. For we shall have to pay our
interest coupons upon the bonds from the beginning. We can begin even
moderate dividends upon our stock after our enterprise has entered upon
fair sailing. The all-important initial problem of financing having been
at least partly settled, we will go before the Legislature and secure a
charter for our road. In these modern days we shall probably have also to
make application to some State railroad or public utility commission. It
will consider our case with great care, granting hearings so that we may
state our plans, and that folk living in the territory which we are about
to tap may urge the necessity of our coming, and that rival railroads or
other opponents may state their objections. After the entire evidence has
been sifted down and weighed in truly judicial fashion, we may hope for
word to "go ahead," from the official commission, which, though it assumes
none of our risk of loss in projecting the line, will gratuitously assume
many of the details of its management.
Perhaps the politicians will poke their noses into our plan; they
sometimes do. If we have plenty of capital behind us; if it becomes
rumored that the P---- or the N---- or the X----, one of the big existing
properties, is back of us, or some "big Wall Street fellow" is guiding our
bonds, we can almost confidently expect their interference. After that it
becomes a matter of diplomacy--and may the best man win!
* * * * *
Let us assume that some of these big obstacles have already been passed,
that the politicians have been placed at arm's length, that the money
needed is in sight--we are ready to begin the construction of our line.
The location is the thing that next vexes us. A few errors in the placing
of our line may spell failure for the whole enterprise. Obviously, these
errors will be of the sort that admit of no easy correction.
If our line is to link two important traffic centres and is to make a
specialty of through traffic it will have to be very much of a town that
will bend the straightness of our route. If, on the other hand, the line
is to pick up its traffic from the territory it traverses we can afford to
neglect no place of possibilities. We must make concessions, even if we
make many twists and turns and climb steep grades; we cannot afford to
pass business by. Perhaps we may even have to worm our way into the hearts
of towns already grown and closely built, and this will be expensive work.
But it will be worth every cent of that expense to go after competitive
business.
We roughly outline our route, and the engineers get their camping duds
ready, particularly in these days when new railroads almost invariably go
into a new country. Their first trip over the route will be known as the
reconnaissance. On it they will make rough plotting of the territory
through which the new line is to place its rails. Our engineers are
experienced. They survey the country with practised eyes. The line must go
on this side of that ridge, because of the prevailing winds and their
influence upon snowdrifts (it costs a mint of money to run ploughs through
a long winter), and on the other side of the next ridge, because the other
side has easily worked loam, and this side heavy rock. There must be
passes through hills and through mountains to be selected now and then,
and all the while the engineer must bear in mind that the amount of his
excavation should very nearly balance the amount of embankment-fill.
Bridges are to be avoided and tunnels must come only in case of absolute
necessity.
There will be several of these reconnaissances and from them the engineers
who are to build the line, and the men who are to own and operate it, will
finally pick a route close to what will be the permanent way.
[Illustration: CONSTRUCTION ENGINEERS BLAZE THEIR WAY ACROSS THE FACE OF
NEW COUNTRY]
[Illustration: THE MAKING OF AN EMBANKMENT BY DUMP-TRAIN]
[Illustration: "SMALL TEMPORARY RAILROADS PEOPLED WITH HORDES OF RESTLESS
ENGINES"]
Then the real survey-work begins. The engineers divide the line, if it is
of any great length, and the several divisions prosecute their work
simultaneously. Each surveying party consists of a front flag-man, who
is a captain and commands a brigade of axe-men in their work of cutting
away trees and bushes; the transit-man, who makes his record of distances
and angles and commands his brigade of chain-men and flag-men; and the
leveller, who studies contour all the while, and supervisors, rod-men and
more axe-men. Topographers are carried, their big drawing boards being
strapped with the camp equipment; and a good cook is a big detail not
likely to be overlooked.
In soft and rolling country this is a form of camp life that turns back
the scoffer: busy summer days and indolent summer nights around the
camp-fire, pipes drawing well and plans being set for the morrow's work.
Another summer all this will be changed. The resistless path of the
railroad will be stepped through here, the group of nodding pines will be
gone, for a culvert will span the creek at this very point.
Sometimes the work of these parties becomes intense and dramatic. The
chief, lowered into a deep and rocky river cañon, is making rough notes
and sketches, following the character of the rock formation, and dreaming
the great dreams that all great engineers, great architects, great
creators must dream perforce. He is dreaming of the day when, a year or
two hence, the railroad's path shall have crowded itself into this
_impasse_, and when the folk who dine luxuriously in the showy cars will
fret because of the curve that spills their soup, and who never know of
the man who was slipped down over a six-hundred-foot cliff in order that
the railroad might find its way.
It is then that the surveying party begins to have its thrills. Perhaps to
put that line through the cañon the party will have to descend the river
in canoes. If the river be too rough, then there is the alternative of
being lowered over the cliffsides. Talk of your dangers of Alpine
climbing! The engineers who plan and build railroads through any
mountainous country miss not a single one of them. Everywhere the lines
must find a foothold. This is the proposition that admits of but one
answer--solution. Sometimes the men who follow the chief in the deep river
cañons, the men with heavy instruments to carry and to operate--transits,
levels, and the like--must have lines of logs strung together for their
precarious foothold as they work. Sometimes the foothold is lost; the rope
that lowers the engineer down over the cliffside snaps, and the folk in
the cheerful dining-room do not know of the graves that are dug beside the
railroad's resistless path.
It is all new and wonderful, blazing this path for civilization; sometimes
it is even accidental. An engineer, baffled to find a crossing over the
Rockies for a transcontinental route saw an eagle disappear through a
cleft in the hills that his eye had not before detected. He followed the
course of the eagle; to-day the rails of the transcontinental reach
through that cleft, and the time-table shows it as Eagle Pass.
* * * * *
Possibly there are still alternative routes when the surveyers return in
the fall and begin to make their finished drawings. Final choices must now
be made, and land-maps that show the property that the railroad will have
to acquire, prepared. The details, of infinite number, are being worked
out with infinite care.
The great problem of all is the problem of grades; in a mountainous
stretch of line this is almost the entire problem. Obviously a perfect
stretch of railroad would be straight and without grades. The railroad
that comes nearest that practically impossible standard comes nearest to
perfection. But as it comes near this perfection, the cost of construction
multiplies many times. Most new lines must feel their way carefully at the
outset. Moreover it is not an impossible thing to reconstruct it after
years of affluence--of which more in another chapter.
A three-per-cent grade is almost the extreme limit for anything like a
profitable operation; even a two-per-cent grade is one in which the
operating people look forward to reconstruction and elimination. Yet there
are short lengths of line up in the mining camps of Colorado, where grades
of more than four per cent are operated; and it is a matter of railroad
history that away back in 1852, when the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was
being pushed through toward Parkersburg, and the great Kingwood tunnel was
being dug, B. H. Latrobe, the chief engineer of the company, built and
successfully operated a temporary line over the divide at a grade of ten
per cent--528 feet to the mile. A locomotive which weighed 28 tons on its
driving-wheels carried a single passenger car, weighing 15 tons, in safety
and in regular operation over this stupendous grade for more than six
months. The ascent was made by means of zigzag tracks on the so-called
switchback principle. That scheme succeeded earlier planes operated by
endless chains; an instance of which is the quite famous road of Mauch
Chunk, originally operated for coal, and now a side scenic trip for
passengers. Other planes of this sort, you will remember, were in
operation at Albany and Schenectady on the old Mohawk & Hudson route, now
a part of the New York Central lines; but all of them involved a change of
passengers and freight to and from their cars, and the zigzag switchback
was considered quite an advance in its day. Two of these ancient
switchbacks are still in regular use for passengers and freight--one at
Honesdale, Pa., and the other at Ithaca, N. Y.
The matter of grades being settled, and with it as a corrollary the
question of minor curves, minor details next claim attention. Perhaps the
water supply along the new line is defective. Then arrangements must be
made for impounding, and perhaps suitable dams and waterworks will be
built for this purpose. The water must be soft, to protect the locomotive
boilers; if hard, an apparatus is erected for the softening process.
Grade crossings are to be avoided, highway crossings being built, wherever
possible, over or under the railroad.
A railroad crossing another railroad at grade is an abomination not to be
permitted nowadays. The universal use of the air-brake has permitted a
reduction of the "head-room,"--the necessary clearance between the rail
and overhead obstruction--from 20 feet to 14 feet. The old "head-room" was
necessary to protect the brakeman who worked atop of the box-cars. This
reduction of six feet in clearance was a matter of infinite relief to
engineers, particularly in the bridging of one railroad over another.
* * * * *
The entire problem of bridges is so intricate a phase of American railroad
construction as to demand attention in a subsequent chapter. In actual
railroad practice it is apt to demand a separate branch of engineering
skill, both in construction and in maintenance. We turn our attention back
to the main problem of the building of our railroad.
When all plans are finished, contracts remain to be divided and
sub-divided; for it would be a brave contractor, indeed, who in these days
would consent to essay himself, any considerable length of railroad line.
In fact, in recent work of heavy nature, the price is almost invariably
placed at an indefinite figure, a certain definite percentage of profit
being allowed the contractor on each cubic yard of rock or soil. In such a
case the contractor's business becomes far less a game of chance; he is,
in effect, the railroad's agent supervising its construction at a certain
set stipend.
Let us say that the construction on our railroad begins in the early
spring. As a matter of real fact it would not be halted long because of
adverse weather conditions. Even up in the frozen and uninhabitable wilds
of the Canadian Northwest, work has been prosecuted on the new Grand Trunk
Pacific throughout the entire twelve months. But in summer the
construction gangs rejoice. The great proposition of bringing mile after
mile of future railroad to sub-grade--the level upon which the cross-ties
are to be set--fairly sweeps forward under the genial warmth of the sun.
The construction is under the supervision of competent engineers, who are,
of course, under the direct supervision of the railroad's own
organization. Every six to twelve or fifteen miles of new line is divided
into sections, better known as residencies, for each is under the eye of
its own resident engineer. He reports to the construction engineer, who in
turn reports to the chief engineer of the railroad, an officer who reports
to no less person than the president of the company.
This great force--for each engineer has gathered about him a competent
staff of young men as expert with compass, with level, and with transit as
were the men who first projected the line--is in the field as quickly as
the contractor. They are to see him bring the line to sub-grade; to see
him place bridges and culverts, bisect high hills with cuttings, bore
tunnels through even higher hills and mountains, span deep valleys with
great embankments. To facilitate quick construction the residencies are
made numerous; work begins at as many initial points as possible. These
points, of course, are situated, where possible, close to water
communication or existing railroad lines, in order that material may be
brought with the least possible delay and expense.
* * * * *
Of course, if the country has a sharp contour, the ordinary difficulties
of line-construction multiply very rapidly. The great cuttings through the
hills may have to be carved out of resisting rock, a work that is carried
on through many levels, known to the engineers as ledges or as benches. If
there are high hills to be notched there will probably be great hollows
where the circumstances do not justify carrying the line on bridge or
trestle. In these cases come the fills, or embankments. We have already
shown how the locating engineer in the first instance has tried to plan
his line so that the earth or rock from his cutting will be as nearly as
possible sufficient to form the near-by embankments. Sometimes it is not,
and then the resident engineers must locate borrow-pits, where the hungry
demand of the railroad for dirt will cause a great hollow to show itself
on the face of the earth. The borrow-pit must be carefully
located--convenient of access, far enough from the track not to be a
danger spot to it. This is one of the infinity of problems that come to
the construction engineer.
For these big jobs laborers' camps will be established close to them; and
small temporary railroads peopled with hordes of restless dummy-engines
and forcing their narrow-gauged rails here and there and everywhere, will
be busy for long weeks and months. There will not be much hand-cutting in
the ledges. Steam shovels, mounted like locomotives upon the rails, and
pushing forward all the while, will fairly eat out the hillside. One of
these will catch up in a single dip of his giant arm more than a wagon
load of soft earth or of rock that has been blasted apart for his coming.
To make the fills the engineers must often build rough wooden trestles out
of the permanent level of the line. The dummy-engines, with their trails
of dump-cars, coming from the back of the steam shovels in the cutting, or
from the nearest borrow-pit, will hardly seem in a single day to make an
appreciable effect upon the fill. But the days and weeks together count,
and the dumping multiplies until the rough trestle has completely
disappeared, and the railroad has a firm and permanent path across the
edge of the dizzy embankment. And these embankments can be made truly
dizzy. The passenger going west from Omaha on the new Lane cut-off of the
Union Pacific finds his path for almost twenty miles through deep cuttings
of the crests of the rolling Nebraska hills, across the edge of the long
fills over wide valleys. The Lackawanna railroad building a great
cut-off on its main line where it passes through New Jersey has just
finished the largest railroad embankment ever built--an earthen structure
for two tracks, three miles long and seventy-five to one hundred and ten
feet in height.
[Illustration: CUTTING A PATH FOR THE RAILROAD THROUGH THE CREST OF THE
HIGH HILLS]
[Illustration: A GIANT FILL--IN THE MAKING]
[Illustration: THE FINISHING TOUCHES TO THE TRACK]
[Illustration: THIS MACHINE CAN LAY A MILE OF TRACK A DAY]
As the line goes forward, the track follows. The new railroad has probably
popularized itself from the outset by hiring the near-by farmers and their
teams to grade the line through their localities, particularly where an
almost level country makes the grading a slight matter. Sometimes in level
country, grading machines, drawn by horses, or by traction engines, have
been used to advantage. These machines are equipped with ploughs which
loosen the soil and place it on conveyor belts. Material can be deposited
twenty-two feet away from the line, and a four-foot excavation can be made
by these machines with ease.
But the laying of the track--the line having been finished at sub-grade
with a top width of from 14 to 20 feet for each standard gauge track to be
laid--the line begins to assume the appearance of a real railroad. Upon
the first stretches of completed track, locomotives and cars employed in
construction service begin to operate. As the track grows, their field of
operation increases. Then comes the day when the track sections begin to
be joined; the railroad is beginning to be a real pathway of steel.
To build this pathway is comparatively a simple matter, once the sub-grade
is finished. A mile a day is not too much for any confident contractor to
expect of his construction gangs. There was that time, back in '69, when a
world's record of ten miles of track laid in a single day was established
on the Central Pacific. For that mile of standard track the contractor
will need 3,168 ties--eight carloads; 352 rails--five carloads; and a
carload of angle irons, bolts, and spikes, as fasteners.
The track-layers are as proud of their profession as any man might be of
his. Their skill is a wondrous thing. Two men who follow the wake of a
wagon roughly place the ties as fast as they are dropped upon the
right-of-way. Another man aligns them with a line that has been strung by
one of the young engineers, a fourth with a notched board, marks the
location of one rail. That rail--the line side--follows close to the
location marks. It is roughly banded and lightly fastened in place. The
other rail--the gauge side--quickly follows. The wonderfully accurate
gauge representing the 4 feet, 8-1/2 inches that is almost the standard of
the work, and which is tested every morning by the engineers, is in
constant use. The railroad track must be true; there is not room for even
the variation of a fraction of an inch in the gauge of the two rails.
In fastening the two long lines of rails, the profession of track-laying
rises to almost supreme heights. The men who fasten the rail with angle
iron and a single roughly-adjusted bolt in each rail-end are
head-strappers and past masters in their art. After them in due season
come the back-strappers, finishing that fine work of solidly bolting the
rail against the vast strain of a thousand-ton train being shot over it at
lightning speed. And after the back-strappers and the men who have spiked
the rail to the ties, comes the locomotive itself, bringing more ties,
more rails, more angle-bars and bolts, and more spikes to the front. Then
sometime later the road-bed is ballasted and the line made ready for heavy
operation.
But track-laying is frequently machine systematized these days; and in
this, as in so many smaller things, the mechanical device has supplanted
the man. A real giant is the track-laying machine. It is mounted upon
railroad tracks and is a form of overhead carrier with a tremendous
overhang. The carrier is fed with the cross-ties from supply cars just
back of the machine and the ties are dropped, each close to its appointed
place, as a locomotive slowly pushes the entire apparatus forward. In a
smaller way the heavy steel rails are delivered from under the overhang
of the carrier. A gang of men make short work of the fastening of the rail
to the cross-ties and the machine moves steadily forward. It has been
known to make two miles a day at this work.
* * * * *
Culverts have been laid for each small run or kill or creek; the
bridge-builders along the new line finish their work and cart off their
kits; the day comes when there is an unbroken railroad from one end of the
new line to the other. It links new rails and new towns; its localities
produce for new markets, commerce from strange quarters pours down upon
the land that has known it not. Passenger trains begin regular operation,
the fresh-painted depots are brilliant in their newness, the shriek of the
locomotive sounds where it has never before sounded.
Life is awakened. The railroad, which is life, has reached forth a new
arm, and creation is begun.