Arizona republican., 1906-08-03
STUPENDOUS ENGINEERING PROBLEM.

The new Grand Trunk Pacific, the biggest and the most interesting of the new railroad projects. is to pass through Edmonton on its way from sea to sea. Edmonton, indeed. prac- tically bisects the western half of the line Between here and Winnipeg. there are eight hundred miles of prairie: between here and Port Simp- son, the terminal point on the Pac:fie, there are a thousand miles of noun tains on the prairie active construc- ton work is today going forward; contractors camps are swarming with Galician laborers; district and assist ant engineers are riding back and forth oyer flat prairie and rolling prairie. sand hills and river bottoms; the pile-driver and the steam shovel are driving back the antelope, the coy ote, and the jack rabbit: the new line changing it's form and substance Do- fore each new obstacle-now an em- bankment. now an excavation, now a trestle.-is pushing inexorably west ward. This much is plain story of constructive work. The plans hava been worked out; the route has been surveyed and staked. The task of the engineers in charge is mainly to see that the contractors I've up to the specifications. Farther west it is dIf- ferent.
 Open your atlas again, and glance at the thousand miles between Edmonton and Port Simpson, on the Pacific. l. is here that you find the blank spaces. Now try to imagine that an unknown wilderness lies between Chicago and
 New York. Imagine. too. that instead of the hills of Pennsylvania and New [ York you have the Canadian Rockies, with a dozen minor ranges thrown in ! for good measure. This means that | you would be lucky to get through | with a maximum altitude of five to six | thousand feet. There are lakes, riv-
 res. and unbridgable chasms in the l way; but you at Chicago. as division l engineer in charge of the survey work, are expected to find the one best route
 to the sea-a thousand miles, remem- l Der. through the impossible-not Q route, but the best route.
 To complicate matters d bit. suppose i that another division engineer, with
 the interests of a rival line deeply at | heart, is also at Chicago. with precise | ly the same object in view. There is very little doubt that only one of you 1 can have that best route. The man
 that misses it ( it is barely conce.v- | able that both may miss it), will put | his company in the way of dropping
 millions of dollars in extra difficult | construction. All this must be made
 up out of profits. Suppose. too, that
 after the two roads are built, your
 grades are sleeper than his. Remem-
 Der that the same engine will haul ex- actly twice as much up four-tenths per l cent grade as up a grade of one and ] two-tenths per cent This mistake will l probably turn out to be more costly | than the first, for your rival will be able to haul more freight with the
 same expenditure for motive power
 and your losses will accumulate from | day to day. The remedy is rebuild l ing-and millions more. In short. ii
 is pretty sharply as the saying runs
 up to you; You must find that one
 best route without wasting a day, and
 you must be certain that you are fifid- | ing it.-From "Conquering the Las Frontier by Samuel Merwin in Sue 1 cess Magazine