Los Angeles herald., 1908-03-17

IH kHEl keen-eyed, capable men, SOL
Isl W diers of fortune, advance
Ill guard of the great army of
- American civilization. This
Is the American Railway En-
gineers and Maintenance of Ways as
sociation. 1t is composed of men who
have done marvellous things in the way
OF railroad building, and who mean
to do more. They are the men who
have pierced wildernesses where few
other men have dared to go, who have
hraved the dangers of hostile Indian
lands, who have breasted streams that
were deemed impossible, who have
hung for hours over the sheer face of
precipices, instruments in hand, risk
ing life, limb and health that a new
railway might cross the continent and
open up new lands, new homes, new
cities for the ever-restless, ever-pio-
neering population of the country.
When in the spring of 1909 an en-
terprising inventor laid small wooden
railway track in the yard of the Bulls
Head tavern, Philadelphia, and invited
all the city to come and see how a
great weight could be moved over this
with small power, Americas railway
system had its beginning. A little
tramway was built at Quincy, Mass,
quarry in 1926, and the Mauch Chunk
switchback in 1927, and then, when the
ungainly "Stourbridge Lion" puffed
along the Carbondale road in 1928. rail-
roading was we'll on it's way to that
great supremacy that 1t now enjoys
In 1880 the United States had twenty
three miles of railway. In 1S4O there
were 2S1S miles, in 1890 there were 1885,
706 now the United States has ap-
proximately 100000 miles. And over
every one of these miles, before the
h NJ
pass and sextant to find the nearest
and best way for the road to follow,
Until recently the east offered less
spectacular engineering feats than the
west, for the western railways mao
the Great Divide to cross, ana IL pre-
sented apparently insurmountable dif~
ficulties. The Appalachian system was
more amenable to mans uses, ana
with the exception of the Hoosac tun-
mel in New England, the series of tun-
nels and wonderful loops of the South
ern road over the Swannanoa pass or
North Carolina, and the incline ROADS
up Mount Washington Lookout noun
tain and in the Catskills, the skill or
the eastern engineer was not SO sorely
taxed until the bridging of the Florida
keys called into force all his inventive
genius.
1t was the far-sighted Flagler that
looked across the sea from Florida to-
ward Cuba realized the future poSSi-
bilities of the island trade, looked down
and saw the half submerged stepping
stones of coral reef and limestone ana
decided to build railroad far out to-
ward Cuba on these natural pillars.
With forty-one of these keys for foun
dations, the road is being built, until 1t
will reach within ninety miles of Cuba
and put New York in touch with Ha-
vana in forty-eight hours. An army
of men is at work, the cost will be $1b.-
000, 900, and the passenger or the future
who looks from his train window along
concrete viaduct and steel rail viii
rarely stop to consider the supreme
achievements of the men who surveyed
this route, and in whose brains the
minutae of detail for combating wind
and sea were all planned out. Like q
long Roman aqueduct, the road
stretches out into the waters. and in
a few years it will be reckoned only as
a laudable achievement very like that
of the Lucin cutoff.
While to the average tourist eye the
two are very like, the Lucin cutoff
probably entailed more work, for where
the Florida keys offered natural foun-
dations of good limestone, the men who
built 102 miles of trestle and f1ll from
Ogden to Lucin across the upper end
of Great Salt lake had a more treach-
erous sea bed to contend with. When
tho Union Pacific built it's road out
from Ogden toward San Francisco back
in the COS it circled around the upper
edge of Great Salt lake, crossing two
small mountain ranges with heavy
grades and sharp curves. On one
mountain the rise was 700 feet in eleven
miles, on the other it was 500 feet in
five and half miles. The tax on the
rolling stock was heavy, the delay of
freight often great. SO the brains of
the road building profession were
called upon and a survey made across
the lake. 1t seemed practicable. the
enterprising Hartman gave orders to
go ahead and machinery and material
began to move lakeward. Among the
items used were $4,000 Oregon pines for
piles, and many more thousand feet OF
lumber for stringers. Twenty-Five
giant pile drivers were put to work,
and all the available railroad dump
certs in the country were in requisition.
Day and night, weekday and Sun
day, 5000 men in ten-hour shirts,
labored increasingly at dumping rocks
for fills, bridging long spaces with tres
tie work, and then coming next day to
find that the lifting power of the salt
sea had made sport of the stones and
the wood work, and it must all be done
ever again. It took two years to build
this piece of road and there's nothing
really spectacular in its appearance,
yet year was spent in making firm
foundations in apparently bottomless
s--------------.-a-