The Pensacola journal. (Pensacola, Fla.) 1898-1985, 1906-10-10
PICTURESQUE TRIPS IN
PALATIAL PULLMAN CARS

On this. key fifteen miles of railroad
will be laid.
Bahia Honda Harbor.
After that, now with short, now
with long jumps. the whole series will
be traversed through Lower Meta
comb, Grassy, Gravel, Vaccas, and
then with an immense spring across
channel $4,000 feet wide to Bahia
Honda, where a little harbor will be
created, enabling direct train commu-
nication with Havana even before the
line is completed to Key West. Deep
draught vessels can secure admit
lance at this point, and the distance
to Havana is only twenty miles
greater than from the city at the end
of the crescent of keys, where ulti-
mately a great seaport will be con-
structed with terminals, wharves and
docks. From the harbor of Key West
the car floats, each capable of con-
veying a train of thirty cars, will ply
to the Cuban capital.
Coral Bugs Help.
Nature has assisted in the project
The little coral insects whose secre-
tons have been petrified so plentiful
ly all along the Florida peninsula
have prepared a broad fat surface to
meet the needs of the engineers, some
portions of it appearing just above
the water in the form of keys-low
fiat islands covered with sedge and
jungle in the uncultivated portions;
with pineapples, lemons and cocoanut
groves where man has fixed his hab-
itation-some of it submerged few
feet beneath the waves that tumble
in from the deeper parts of the sea.
The coral rock provides natural bal
last-one that may be dug out in
chunks large and small and used for
filling where the line crosses one OF
the swampy tracts of the region.
Rapid Progress of Work.
The work is well under way Each
practical problem is being solved as 1t
arises. For a railroad thus to go to
sea is something new in the history of
engineering, but inventive genius is
proving itself equal to the task. The
greater expense is to be explained not
only in the large mileage of bridges
and viaducts but in the exposed char
acter of the line, for the cost exceeds
that of average railroad construction
about $4,000 a mile, which is per-
haps three times greater than that in
ordinary fiat country where no long
bridges have to be built. The total
involved is from fifteen to twenty mil
lion dollars.
Safest in the World.
The construction work began in
1905 on the basis of surveys which
had been made previously. Ali the
grading of the section of the road on
the mainland has now been finished,
and part of the viaduct work COM
pleted. Over nearly all the distance,
fortunately, there is foundation OF
coral, which allows the concrete, re-
enforced with steel, to be firmly
moored with steel supports. No road
way in the world, anywhere, experts
say, will be safer than this; and none
more beautiful as it lies cleaning
white in the tropical sun. In few
places, where the foundation is sand
piling is used to afford foundation
Every here and there dredges are
actively pumping up sand from deeI
water, conveying it through pipe:
and depositing 1t In shallow water tC
help in the construction OF the line
Elsewhere are to be found dredget
which eat their way over the fiat lane
leaving a shallow canal on either side
of the roadbed which they throw up
(, Pushing Across Keys.
The pioneers OF the railroad tna
is going to sea" are at this writing
pushing their way across the keys
many of which are barren and unten
anted though few are inhabited DS
fishermen and wreckers, some O
them living in queer. picturesque
houses built on stilts AS the narrow
messages of water between the ISLANDS
are crossed the construction crew:
find themselves often amidst the flee
OF sponge fishers from Key West, wh'
lift their valuable eargoes from tn'
shoals about these islands.
Building a railway line across sucf
a series of islands and stretches o
open water naturally presents Prac
i tical problems in the housing OF men
/ After thu negro laborers have cleared
ont the dense tropical jungle on tn
uninhabited islands. the construction
crews of white men of various nation
i alities arrive. On the land they iv'
in temporary wooden houses, or IL
4 some cases in well arranged tents
each in a favorable location on firn
ground. The water for cooking ant