Part 5

Some of the early English engineers, not appreciating this, endeavored to lay down solid stone walls coped with stone cut to a smooth surface, on which they laid their rails. They called this "permanent way," as distinguished from the temporary track of rails and cross-ties used by contractors in building the lines. But experience soon showed that the temporary track, if supported by a bed of broken stone, always kept itself drained and was always elastic, and remained in much better order than the more expensive so-called "permanent way." When the increase in the weight of our rolling stock began to take place, dating from about 1870, iron rails were found to be wearing out very fast. Some railway men declared that the railway system had reached its full development. But in this world the supply generally equals the demand. When a thing is very much wanted, it is sure to come, sooner or later. The process of making steel invented by, and named after, Henry Bessemer, of England, and perfected by A. L. Holley, of this country, gave us a steel rail which at the present time costs less than one of iron, and has a life five or six times as long, even under the heavy loads of to-day. We are now approaching very near the limit of what the rail will carry, while the joints are becoming less able to do their duty. Bad joints mean rough track. Rough track means considerably greater expenditure both for its maintenance and that of all the rolling stock, as the blows and shocks do reciprocal damage, both to the rails and to that which runs on them. Hence all railway managers are now devoting more care and attention to their tracks.

In laying track on a new railway, if it be in an old-settled country where other railroads are near and the highways good, the ties are delivered in piles along the line where wanted, and the haul of the rails is comparatively short. The ties are laid down, spaced and bedded, adzed off to a true bearing, and the rails laid upon them; the workmen being divided into gangs, each doing a different part of the work. After the track is laid, the ballast-trains come along and cover the roadbed with gravel. The track is raised, the gravel tamped well under the ties, and the track is ready for use.

The road is then divided into sections about five miles long. On each section there is a section-boss, with four to six laborers. Their duty is to pass over the track at least twice a day in their hand-car, to examine every joint, and where one is found low or out of line, to bring it back to its true position by tamping gravel under it and moving the track. They have also to see that all ditches are kept clear of water, a most essential point, as without good drainage the ground under gravel ballast becomes soft, and the mud is churned up into the gravel, and the whole soon gets into bad order.

They have to see that the fences are all right, that trees and telegraph poles do not fall across the track, that wooden bridges do not burn down, that iron and stone bridges are not undermined by freshets, and always to set up danger signals to warn the trains.

It is admitted by competent judges, that the track of the Pennsylvania Railroad is the best in this country, and one of the best in the world. It is kept up to its high standard of excellence by a system of competitive examinations.

About the first of November, in each year, after the season's work has been done, a tour of inspection is made over all the lines, on a train of cars expressly prepared, consisting of two or more cars not unlike ordinary box cars with the front end taken out. Each car is pushed in front of an engine, and goes slowly over the line, by daylight only, so that the inspecting party may have a full view of the road.

The Pennsylvania road is divided into Grand Divisions, Superintendents' Divisions, of about 100 miles long, Supervisors' Divisions, of about 30 miles, and Subdivisions, of 2½ miles.

The examining committee for each Supervisor's Division consists of the supervisors of other divisions. As they pass along, they mark on a card. One sub-committee marks the condition of the alignment and surfacing of the rails; another the condition of the joints and the spacing of the ties; another the ballast, switches, and sidings; another the ditches, road-crossings, station grounds. The marks range from 0 to 10, 0 being very bad, 5 medium, and 10 perfection. When the trip is done these reports are all collected and the average is taken for each division.

As an inducement to the supervisors and the foremen of the Subdivisions to excel on their division, premiums are given as follows:

$100 to the supervisor having the best yard on his Grand Division.

$100 each to the supervisors having the best Supervisor's Division on each Superintendent's Division of 100 miles.

$75 to the foreman having the best subdivision of 2½ miles on each Grand Division.

$60 to each foreman having the best subdivision on his Superintendent's Division, including yards.

$50 to the foreman having the best subdivision on each Supervisor's Division.

In addition to the above there are two premiums of honor given by the general manager, which bring into competition with each other those parts of the main line lying on either side of Philadelphia, viz.:

$100 to the supervisor having the best line and surface between Pittsburg and Jersey City.

$50 to the second best ditto.

If a supervisor or foreman of subdivision receives one of the higher premiums, he is not allowed to be a competitor for any others premiums, except the premiums of honor.

The advantages of these inspections and premiums are these: Every man knows exactly what the standard of excellence is, and strives to have his section reach it. Under the old system, a man never got off of his own section, and had no means of comparison, and like all untravelled persons, became conceited.

The standard of excellence becomes higher and higher every year. Perfect fairness prevails, as the men themselves are the judges. The officers of the road make no marks, but usually look on and see that there is fair play.

This brings the officers and men nearer together, and shows the men how all are working for the common good. An agreeable break is made in the monotony of the men's lives. They have something to look forward to better than a spree.

It is by the adoption of such methods as these that strikes will be prevented in the future. It encourages an _esprit de corps_ among the men, and educates them in every way.

This system was first devised and put in operation on the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1879, by Mr. Frank Thomson, General Manager, to whom the credit of it is justly due.

V.

I have thus endeavored to trace the history of the building of a railway; and it must have been seen, from what has been said, that the evolution of the railway and of its rolling stock follows the same laws which govern the rest of the world: adaptation to circumstances decides what is fittest, and that alone survives. The scrap-heap of a great railway tells its own story.

Our railways have now reached a development which is wonderful. The railways of the United States, if placed continuously, would reach more than half-way to the moon. Their bridges alone would reach from New York to Liverpool. Notwithstanding the number of accidents that we read of in the daily papers, statistics show that less persons are killed annually on railways than are killed annually by falling out of windows.

Railways have so cheapened the cost of transportation that, while a load of wheat loses all of its value by being hauled one hundred miles on a common road, meat and flour enough to supply one man a year can, according to Mr. Edward Atkinson, be hauled 1,500 miles from the West to the East for one day's wages of that man, if he be a skilled mechanic. If freight charges are diminished in the future as in the past, this can soon be done for one day's wages of a common laborer.

The number of persons employed in constructing, equipping, and operating our railways is about two millions.

The combined armies and navies of the world, while on peace footing, will draw from gainful occupations 3,455,000 men.

Those create wealth--these destroy it. Is it any wonder that America is the richest country in the world?

The rapidity with which it is possible to build railways over the prairies of the West is extraordinary. It is true that the amount of earth necessary to be moved is much less than on the railways of the East. In Iowa and Wisconsin, the amount runs from 20,000 to 25,000 yards per mile, while in Dakota it is only 12,000 to 15,000 yards per mile. After making all due allowance for this, the result is still remarkable.

The Manitoba system was extended in 1887 through Dakota and Montana, a distance of 545 miles. A small army of 10,000 men, with about 3,500 teams, commanded by General D. C. Shepard, of St. Paul, a veteran engineer and contractor, did it all between April 2 and October 19. All materials and subsistence had to be hauled to the front, from the base of supplies. The army slept in its own tents, shanties, and cars. The grading was cast up from the side ditches, sometimes by carts, and sometimes by the digging machine.

Everything was done with military organization, except that what was left behind was a railway and not earth-work lines of defence. Assuming that this railway, ready for its equipment, cost $15,100 per mile, or $8,175,000, and if it be true, as statisticians tell us, that every dollar expended in building railways in a new country adds ten to the value of land and other property, then this six months' campaign shows a solid increase of the wealth of our country of over eighty millions of dollars. Had it been necessary for our Government to keep an army of observation of the same size on the Canadian frontier, there would have been a dead loss of over eight millions of dollars, and the only result would have been a slight reduction of the Treasury surplus.

It must be remembered that this railway was built after the American system: when the rails were laid, so as to carry trains, it was not much more than half finished; the track had to be ballasted, the temporary wooden structures replaced by stone and iron, and many buildings and miles of sidings were yet to be constructed. But it began to earn money from the very day the last rail was laid, and out of its earnings, and the credit thereby acquired, it will complete itself.

And this is only one instance out of many. The armies of peace are working all over our country, increasing our wealth, and binding all parts into a common whole. We have here the true answer to the Carlyles and the Ruskins who ask: "What is the use of all this? Is a man any better who goes sixty miles an hour than one who went five miles an hour?" "Were we not happier when our fields were covered with their golden harvests, than now, when our wheat is brought to us from Dakota?"

The grand function of the railway is to change the whole basis of civilization from military to industrial. The talent, the energy, the money, which is expended in maintaining the whole of Europe as an armed camp is here expended in building and maintaining railways, with their army of two millions of men. Without the help of railways the rebellion of the Southern States could never have been put down, and two great standing armies would have been necessary. By the railways, aided by telegraphs, it is easy to extend our Federal system over an entire continent, and thus dispense forever with standing armies.

The moral effect of this upon Europe is great, but its physical effect is still greater. American railways have nearly abolished landlordism in Ireland, and they will one day abolish it in England, and over the continent of Europe. So long as Europe was dependent for food upon its own fields, the owner of those fields could fix his own rental. This he can no longer do, owing to the cheapness of transportation from Australia and from the prairies of America, due to the inventions of Watt, the Stephensons, Bessemer, and Holley.

With the wealth of the landlord his political power will pass away. The government of European countries will pass out of the hands of the great landowners, but not into those of the rabble, as is feared. It will pass into the same hands that govern America to-day--the territorial democracy, the owners of small farms, and the manufacturers and merchants. When this comes to pass, attempts will be made to settle international disputes by arbitration instead of war, following the example of the Geneva arbitration between the two greatest industrial nations of the world. Whether our Federal system will ever extend to the rest of the world, no one knows, but we do know that without railways it would be impossible.

When we consider the effects of all these wonderful changes upon the sum of human happiness, we must admit that the engineer should justly take rank with statesmen and soldiers, and that no greater benefactors to the human race can be named than the Stephensons and their American disciples--Allen, Rogers, Jervis, Winans, Latrobe, and Holley.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is proper here to say that English engineers now appreciate the merits of the American swivelling truck or bogie. In the article on Railways in the last edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica," speaking of locomotives, the author of the article, who is an English engineer of high authority, says: "American practice, many years since, arrived at two leading types of locomotive for passenger, and for goods traffic. The passenger locomotive has eight wheels, of which four in front are framed in a bogie, and the four wheels behind are coupled drivers. _This is the type to which English practice has been approximating._" The italics are ours.

[2] The statistics of ten leading English and ten leading American lines, given by Dorsey, show the following results: 1. The cost per year of the rations, wages, fuel of an American locomotive is $5,590; of an English locomotive, $3,080. 2. Average yearly number of train-miles run by American locomotive, 23,928; English locomotive, 17,539. 3. Yearly earnings: American locomotive, $14,860; English locomotive, $10,940, although the English freight charges are much greater than those of the United States.

[3] The writer has obtained many of the statistics used in this article from A. M. Wellington's "Economic Theory of Railway Location," a perfect mine of valuable information upon all such matters.

[4] The amount of permanent wood and iron truss bridges, and of temporary wooden trestles on the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul is as follows:

Truss bridges, 700 spans, average 93 feet, 12-4/5 miles. Trestle " 7,196 " " 77 " 103-1/10 " ------ -------- Total, 7,896 115-9/10 "

The approximate total number of bridges in the United States was in 1888:

Iron and wood truss bridges, 61,562 spans, 1,086 miles. Wooden trestles, 147,187 2,127 " -------- ------ Total, 208,749 3,213 "

Probably three-fourths of the truss bridges are now of iron or steel, and may be considered perfectly safe so long as the trains remain upon the rails and do not strike the side trusses. The wooden trestles are a constant source of danger from decay or burning or from derailed trains, and should be replaced by permanent structures as fast as time and money will allow.

[5] See following article on "Feats of Railroad Engineering," page 86.

[6] For fuller description of work in a caisson see "Feats of Railway Engineering," page 69.

[7] See "Feats of Railway Engineering," page 55.

FEATS OF RAILWAY ENGINEERING.

BY JOHN BOGART.

Development of the Rail--Problems for the Engineer--How Heights are Climbed--The Use of Trestles--Construction on a Mountain Side--Engineering on Rope Ladders--Through the Portals of a Cañon--Feats on the Oroya Railroad, Peru--Nochistongo Cut--Rack Rails for Heavy Grades--Difficulties in Tunnel Construction--Bridge Foundations--Cribs and Pneumatic Caissons--How Men work under Water--The Construction of Stone Arches--Wood and Iron in Bridge-building--Great Suspension Bridges--The Niagara Cantilever and the enormous Forth Bridge--Elevated and Underground Roads--Responsibilities of the Civil Engineer.

There are one hundred and fifty thousand miles of railway in the United States: three hundred thousand miles of rails--in length enough to make twelve steel girdles for the earth's circumference. This enormous length of rail is wonderful--we do not really grasp its significance. But the rail itself, the little section of steel, is an engineering feat. The change of its form from the curious and clumsy iron pear-head of thirty years ago to the present refined section of steel is a scientific development. It is now a beam whose every dimension and curve and angle are exactly suited to the tremendous work it has to do. The loads it carries are enormous, the blows it receives are heavy and constant, but it carries the loads and bears the blows and does its duty. The locomotive and the modern passenger and freight cars are great achievements; and so is the little rail which carries them all.

The railway to-day is one of the matter-of-fact associations of our active life. We use it so constantly that it requires some little effort to think of it as a wonderful thing; a creation of man's ingenuity, which did not exist when our grandfathers were young. Its long bridges, high viaducts, and dark tunnels may be remarked and remembered by the traveller, but the narrow way of steel, the road itself, seems but a simple work. And yet the problem of location, the determination, foot by foot and mile by mile, of where the line must go, calls in its successful solution for the highest skill of the engineer, whose profession before the railway was created hardly existed at all. Locomotives now climb heights which a few years ago no vehicle on wheels could ascend. The writer, with some engineer friends, was in the mountains of Colorado during the summer of 1887, and saw a train of very intelligent donkeys loaded with ore from the mines, to which no access could be had but by those sure-footed beasts. Within a year one of that party of engineers had located and was building a railway to those very mines. No heights seem too great to-day, no valleys too deep, no cañons too forbidding, no streams too wide; if commerce demands, the engineer will respond and the railways will be built.

The location of the line of a railway through difficult country requires the trained judgment of an engineer of special experience, and the most difficult country is not by any means that which might at first be supposed. A line through a narrow pass almost locates itself. But the approach to a summit through rolling country is often a serious problem. The rate of grade must be kept as light as possible, and must never exceed the prescribed maximum. The cuttings and the embankments must be as shallow as they can be made--the quantities of material taken from the excavations should be just about enough to make adjacent embankments. The curves must be few and of light radius--never exceeding an arranged limit. The line must always be kept as direct as these considerations will allow--so that the final location will give the shortest practicable economical distance from point to point. Many a mile of railway over which we travel now at the highest speed has been a weary problem to the engineer of location, and he has often accomplished a really greater success by securing a line which seems to closely fit the country over which it runs without marking itself sharply upon nature's moulding, than if he had with apparent boldness cut deep into the hills and raised embankments and viaducts high over lowlands and valleys.

But roads must run through many regions where very different measures must be taken to secure a location practicable for traffic. For instance, a line at a high elevation approaches a wide valley which it must cross. The rate of descent is fixed by the established maximum grade, and the sides of the valley are much steeper than that rate. Then the engineer must gain distance--that is to say, he must make the line long enough to overcome the vertical height. This can often be accomplished by carrying it up the valley on one side and down on the other. Tributary valleys can be made use of if necessary, and the desired crossing thus accomplished. But at times even these expedients will not suffice. Then the line is made to bend upon itself and wind down the hillside upon benches cut into the earth, or rock, curving at points where nature affords any sort of opportunity, and reaching the valley at last in long convolutions like the path of a great serpent on the mountain side. These lines often show several tiers of railway, one directly above the other, as may be seen in the illustrations on pages 49 and 51.

The long trestle shown in the illustration opposite is an example of an expedient often of the greatest service in railway construction. These trestles are built of wood, simply but strongly framed together, and are entirely effective for the transport of traffic for a number of years. Then they must be renewed, or, what is better, be replaced by embankment, which can be gradually made by depositing the material from cars on the trestle itself. The trestle illustrated is interesting as conforming to the curve of the line, which in that country, the mountains of Colorado, was probably a necessity of location.

* * * * *

Where the direct turning of a line upon itself may not be necessary, there may and often must be bold work done in the construction of the road upon a mountain side. It must be supported where necessary by walls built up from suitable foundations, often only secured at a great depth below the grade of the road. Projecting points of rock must be cut through, and any practicable natural shelf or favorable formation must be made use of, as in the picture on page 61. In some of the mountain locations, galleries have been cut directly into the rock, the cliff overhanging the roadway, and the line being carried in a horizontal cut or niche in the solid wall.