Evening star., 1898-12-31

White Pass route merge at or about Lake
Bennett ana SO On down to Dawson they
are identical. but they cross the mountains
near the coast by different passes. and the
White Pass has the advantage of getting
over the range at lower altitude.
The railroad enterprise now actually on
foot contemp'ates saving first this terrible
forty miles from deep water to the head of
Lake Bennett. Then the railroad will be
carried on down the Yukon tributaries some
2lo miles to Fort Selkirk few weeks ago
the railroad was actually running and
carrying passengers and freight from Skag-
uay out about seventeen miles, and prob
ably by this time it is running to the head
of the pass. or twenty miles from deep wa
| ter. Thence to Lake Bennett the railroad
company has its own mule train, which
takes the goods of its shippers on to ware
| houses, where they may be stored and
, whence hey may be taken by boats or
ever, TO carry the railroad all the way to
Fort Selkirk during 1899.
Costly and Difficult.
The work of building the railroad from
deep wafer to the lead of the pass has nat
ur;'lly been costly and difficult. The alti-
tHde TO be overcome in going twenty miles
was ESQ feet and as this altitude was not
distributed uniformly over the twenty
miles. but concentrated in the last part,
obviously good deal of skill had to be en-
| pioyed to avoid irpractiCable grades In
fact, the rOa1 has been built to the summit
with Il maximum grade OF SO per cent or
2oG feet per mile. There are few railroads
| in the world that work grades as heavy as
| this b. ordinary adhesion engines but to
secure even this grade many sharp curves
were adopted. and vet the rock work was
very heavy. The IA res of great cliffs have
| been blasted off and tumbled into the canon
below to make a shelf for the railroad.
Ihe first twenty miles is said to have cost
$l.2Heopo. or $4,000 4 mile, which is about
the average cost of the railroads of the
United States. including their equipment,
their four tracks. their great city terminals,
etc. and ye- TINS White Pass and Yukon
railroad is My three feet gauge, is laid
with ffty-SiN-pound rails and has but little
equipment. TIE reader can Judge. there
fore. that the cost of the actual construc-
ton of the roadhed has been very heavy.
All in the Days Work.
OF the hardships and difficulties of the
engineers We need not speak. For genera
tiOns the civil engineer has been accustom-
ed to fight savage nature and savage man,
to meet sudden emergencies on which not
| only his life but his reputation hung, and
! to take hunger and thirst, heat and cold,
danger and endurance as matters of course
until he has come to be an inarticulate
and unsung hero. and the men who are
building the railroad over the White Pass
would be surprised if we gave much space
TO their achievements. They take it as all
in the days work.
Iit NpIh lids Dttil pUSiltI on lHTOuSn the
summer just passed with 200 or $50 men,
and fortunately for much of that time the
engineers could command twenty-five hours
a day of daylight in each twenty-four. and
indeed during the hours that the sun was
below the horizon there was bright twi-
light.
Expensive Travelling.
The road has lately put in a regular
freight and passenger service for seventeen
miles, and perhaps the charges are the
heaviest of any railroad in the world The
passenger fare for this seventeen miles is
$40 At the same rate it would cost $lS2
to go from New York to Chicago, or $57
from Chicago to St. Louis. The tirst-class
freight rate for the same seventeen miles
is s190 per 100 pounds, or 223 cents per ton
per mile The average freight rate of the
United States is $40 cents per ton per
mile. and good deal of freight is carried