The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1870-05-07
A Trip Over the Central Pacific Rail.
road.

A contributor to tho american Church.
man thus graphically describes trip over
the Central Pacific Railroad:
The real difficulty in the way of engineer
ing, in connecting the two oceans, occurs
on the western side. 1t is all plain sailing
ON the eastern, till the road descends by a
steep grade and through a pair of long tun-
nels into the Salt Lake Basin by Webster
and Echo Canons. The level plains of Ne
braska, and the high table land Of the
Laramie Plains, by which the road ascends
and crosses the Rocky Mountains, at an
altitude of 5000 feet, offered no difficulty
to the engineer The trouble on the Union
Pacific was from the Indians-the warlike
Sioux and Cheyennes-and from the fact
of the great distance from supplies and ma
terial. But OH the western side, the engin-
eering problem was the great one from the
start.
Immediately after leaving Sacramento the
ascent begins, and the problem was to as
| cend the Sierra Nevada range to a hight of
1000 feet within distance of 80 miles.
There was no getting round the ring
The mountains stood there barring the way
eastward. They would not get out of the
, way for Il railroad, and the "passes," by
which travellers in the old time surmounted
the obstacle, are all frem 5000 to 1000 feet
at their hight above the sea level.
1t was, indeed, the common talk in Cali
fornia that it was impossible to carry a
railroad up the western face of the Sierra.
Even good engineers considered the under
taking preposterous.
! 1t is easy enough to mount it from the
east, for the high table land of the 50 great
| desert comes up to its eastern side from
| 1000 to 5000 feet. 1t fact, the Sierra Ne
the embankment being half continent
and this, the guttered and storm washed
front of it towards the Pacific.
The point was to get up this rocky face
to the table land it bounded, and to do that
| i'll a very short space, for the continent
breaks off short and comes down sheer
But California energy, using 10000
patient Cinnamon, solved the problem, and
took the track up and over, along the
mountain side, through deep and long tun-
nels, across rittcd ehasms in the rocks, over
headlong torrents and by the dizzy edges
of abysses thousands of feet down, and
''around Cape Horn
But even when the work was done, the
snow avalanche, or the earth slide from
the mountain round whose side, half up,
the iron path winds twisting upward might
sweep the work away, or overwhelm the
track, and make it useless for weeks OF
months.
There was remedy also for this in the
skill and determination of the men who die
this work. They just rooted in their roaG
for fifty miles.
They took the giant stems of the pine:
and braced them against the mountain side
framing them and interlacing them will
beams. They sloped the roof sus
tanned by massive timbers, and stayed by
braces laid into the rock, and covered will
heavy plank, up and against the precipice
so that descending earth or snow would b.
shot clean over the safely housed track into
the pine tops below; and SO they run thei
trains in security under cover, and hav'
conquered the snow in its own domain.
There is one drawback These "snow
sheds - shut out forty odd miles of thu
most magnificent scenery on the whole tril
notably Bonner Lake, and the deep val