Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1879-08-21
Work on the C., II. v. q Wheel
ing Railroad.
Cor. Cleveland Leader. ]
HuRICuSVHI1

Work OH the C., II. V. IL Wheel
ing Railroad.
Cor Cleveland Leader.
UHRICHSvILLE, August Z.
The Cleveland, Tuscarawas Valley and
Wheeling Railroad has for some time
been completed to Uhrichsville and
Dennison, and the word now is, "On to
Wheeling" The distance to the latter
place from Uhrichsville is fifty-seven
miles. About three-fourths of the
grading is already done, and three Of the
four tunnels are completed. The long
est tunnel, the-one in Belmont county,
will be fifteen hundred feet long when
finished About five hundred feet yet
remains to be excavated. The track-lay-
ing has been commenced at Uhrichs-
vile, and it is expected that it will be
completed to Wheeling by the first of
December. co.
A SCARCITY OF LABOR
Has retarded the work thus far. Out of
the five companies to which proposals
were made for bids to furnish steel rails.
three declined to make any bids for a
year. When contracts were finally made
for rails then new difficulty arose.
Notwithstanding the hue and cry about
the thousands of idle men it was impos-
sible to find men to work on this road.
This necessitated the employment of i'm
proved machinery to load and unload
gravel trains and to do other work. /
had the good fortune before reaching
DenniSon to meet
MR.. OSCAR TOWNSEND,
General Manager of this road, and he
stopped the train long enough for me to
witness the working of the machinery
used to replace the labor of human
hands. There is twenty-five horse
power engine, with attachments similar
to those used on dredge, and an i'm
mense bucket suspended to the arm of a
derrick by heavy chains. By rapid
movement of the machinery this bucket
swings to and fro and is driven into the
earth. and is then raised up full of grav-
el, which is emptied upon fat car. The
bucket holds eight barrels. 1t can be
filled and emptied once a minute, load
ing car in four minutes.
This piece of mechanism moves with
the utmost precision, and in beholding
it ones thoughts instinctiyely turn to
| the antediluvian monsters that once
prowled about uprooting trees; or to the
tabled exploits of the Titans and Cy-
clops. Once minute it plunges into
the hillside with as little trouble as you
would dip bucket into water, and
comes forth filled with
THREE TONS OF GRAVEL.
This load is takeu up and deposited with
as much ease as an elephant takes up a
straw. When the long line of flat cars
are loaded they are drawn to some place
on the road where the track is Temporal
rily sustained by trestlework, and here
eight or ten cars are emptied per minute
by means of sharp-pointed plow pulled
over them by the locomotive By the
use of this machinery twelve or fourteen
men can now do what formerly required
not less than one hundred But this sub
stitution of steam for human labor has
wrought another important change. In
the olden times, when the Democratic
| chances of success in an election were
almost hopeless, some shrewd Hibernian
would inspire confidence in the ranks of
! the faithful by telling them to "wait till
the gravel train comes in with the Dim
Ocratic voters" As political machine
the "gravel train" is now defunct. Mr.
James Reynolds, the road master, him
| self Democrat and Hibernian, OF
French parentage, assures me that the
! r;ruductiOn of this machinery will
probably reduce the Democratic major
ity OF Tuscarawas to very meagre pro.
! portions.
INCREASED BUSINESS
is expected for this road when it reaches
Wheeling, where not less than 100000
tons of iron are used annually in the var
ious manufacturing establishments. The
city OF Wheeling has population of 25,-