The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1907-08-05
TRACKS MILE DEEP IN EARTH
Canyon Of Colorado River to Be Entered by Engineering Feat

thus giving perfect control over the
car, which, because of not being cou-
pied to the locomotive, can be let down
independently.
Whereas the Pixies Peak railway
and the new marvel projected for the
Grand Canyon are perhaps the most
spectacular of all the feats of modern
railroad engineering, they are by no
means the only masterpieces of steel
tracked highway construction to be
found in the empire between the Mis-
sissippi and the Pacific coast. Indeed.
the entire region abounds in miracles
of railroad building. Great mountains
have been tunneled and chasms
bridged after a fashion deemed fool
hardy, not to say impossible, before
they were accomplished. Such achieve
ments as the building of the Cascade
mountains tunnel, two miles in length,
in twenty eight months, have resulted
in the selection of Yankee railroad en-
gineers and contractors for the most
difficult tasks in all parts of the world.
Thus it was two Americans who pro-
iected and built that marvel of enSi-
neering, the Oroya railroad, in Peru,
which reaches an elevation of more
than $1,000 feet above sea level-even
higher than Pixies Peak road-and
which has more than sixty tunnels on
our railroad builders have won all their
triumphs in mountainous regions,
where nature seems to forbid the pass
age of man. There is nothing in the
annals of engineering more thrilling
than the successful fight recently
Waged to turn back into its course the
nomadic Colorado river. Ere this was
accomplished the Southern Pacific
railroad had to frequently change its
Al eI,, mo lITlCr
over the Salton sea by means of tres
ties.
Western Canada has been the scene
of some splendid exploits in railroad
building. For instance, there was the
occasion when in the construction Of
the mountain division of the Canadian
Pacific it was found necessary at a
point on the Fraser river to skirt the
edge of a rocky mountain by means of
cutting a ledge along the face of a
cliff. This might have been compare
lively simple as an engineering prob
lem were it not for the fact that half
way along the mountain side was a
deep cleft in the rock, which, of course,
made break in the shelf that was be-
ing cut. This cleft was hundreds of
feet in width, and when a wooden tres
tie was thrown across it it fell under
the weight of a construction train.
sOurceful railroad builder, conceived
the idea of a masonry bridge in this
Jaws of DEATH" as it is called, and he
accordingly built a stone structure that
stands unimpaired to this day.
One of the most daring dreams of
any railroad builder is that of D. II.
Moffat, the Colorado pioneer, who has
undertaken to construct a railroad
from Denver to Salt Lake City on an
air line, and in doing this has had to
climb the crest of the great divide.
Tunnels almost without number,
bridges spanning seemingly bOttOmless
chasms in the mountains and snow
sheds-one of them, a mile in length
are features of this line in its climb
to an altitude of II, $50 feet through
wilderness that until the advent of
Moffat's men was supposed to consti-
tute an impenetrable barrier
The ingenuity for which Americans
are famous is continually cropping up
to help solve perplexing problems in
railroad building. This knack was re-
sponsible for the inception of the prac-
tce, now general in the west, of form
ing fills or entertainments by means of
hydraulic power. The usual procedure
under such circumstances is to con-
struct a temporary dam and with the
force of the water thus obtained to Sc
a motOr-far more powerful than the
average fire hose-to tear down the
hills in the vicinity. The gravel thus
washed down is conducted in wooden
conduits to any point desired and ter
raced up to form a fill or bank in any
form desired. Often when a ravine has
been partially filled by this novel
transference of earth and rock short
span bridge will suffice, where former
ly long wooden trestle had been nee
essary.