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The first freight cars of the very old railroad at Mauch Chunk weighed 1,600 pounds each, and were permitted to carry a weight or "burden" of only 3,200 pounds. When the Boston & Albany first began using freight cars 30 feet long, it was so confused that it gave each end of the car a separate number for convenience in billing and designating consignments.

Nowadays 40 tons is the right load for an efficient car, although they go as high as 55 and 60 tons' capacity; the car itself may weigh approximately half that figure.

Freight cars by hundreds of thousands go bumping all over the different railroads of the land, and all the while they are getting bumped and broken in accidents--large and small. In such cases they are hauled to the nearest shop of the railroad upon which they are travelling and there repaired at the cost of the road that owns them. In earlier days, the job of master mechanic was no sinecure, for each road built its cars upon its own plans and no two of these plans were alike. A simple broken part necessitated the manufacture of a new part. It was a matter of great confusion and expensive to every line.

The organization of the Master Car Builders, in 1867, solved that problem.

This organization, through committee, made first the freight car standard and then the passenger standard. Axles, bolts, king-pins--every one of the intricate car-parts--were brought to standard and numbered sizes. After that all that a master mechanic had to do was to keep an assortment of standard car parts in his store-room, and he could make reasonable repairs to any car that travelled rails. The standardization has gone steadily forward year by year; it has included a variety of things, even such details as systematic numbering and lettering of cars. It is one of the evidences of the constant bettering of the American railroad, the steady effort to bring it to an economical and scientific basis.

Recently some of the railroads have made intelligent experiments, seeking to devise a vehicle that should be both locomotive and car, and that should be especially adapted for small side-lines, where traffic runs exceedingly light. Some success has been found in the use of a passenger coach, into which a gasolene engine has been introduced, and several of these cars are in regular use in the West. Two or three of them have been employed for three or four years on Union Pacific branches in and around Denver. They render a possible solution for one railroad problem--the problem of providing sufficient service for some branch where local traffic is slight. The gasolene car requires but two men, as against a minimum crew of five men for even the smallest steam passenger train. It can be quickly handled, will make many successive stops readily, and generally provides an efficient addition to the regular passenger equipment. A few years ago it would have given the standard steam railroads an excellent weapon against the constant encroachments of paralleling electric roads through their good passenger traffic districts; even to-day it offers a possible solution of the difficult problem of the very small branch side-lines.

CHAPTER IX

REBUILDING A RAILROAD

RECONSTRUCTION NECESSARY IN MANY CASES--OLD GRADES TOO HEAVY--CURVES STRAIGHTENED--TUNNELS AVOIDED--THESE IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED ESPECIALLY BY FREIGHT LINES.

To the operating heads of the great railroad systems, rebuilding a line is to-day a far more important problem than the building of new routes. The country has grown--grown in wealth, among other things. The causes that demanded the very greatest economy in the building of early railroad lines no longer exist. The hill that the early engineer carefully rounded with his line is now pierced without a second thought. Grades that were once deemed slight are now classed as impossible. The almost infinite development in the operation of the railroad has seen the grade or the curve, not as a slight matter, but as a matter which, however slight in a single instance, becomes in the course of constant operation a heavy operating expense. To-day the operating folk of the big railroads are counting the pennies where they countlessly multiply in these fashions; it is one of the greatest factors in the grinding operation competition between the great railroad systems of the country.

It is all quite as it should be. The early builders did the best that they might do with the opportunities that were theirs. They got the railroad through. It developed wealth for itself, as well as for the territory it served; and with that wealth it is enabled in these piping days of peace and plenty to correct the alignment errors of the early builders.

Moreover, there are frequent cases where the steady increase of traffic has rendered it necessary for a railroad to parallel its trunks with new lines, quite aside from the consideration of grade and curve.

As far back as the early fifties this great work of rebuilding the trunk-line railroads was begun. Certain serious errors in the original alignment of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad between Baltimore and the Potomac River were corrected, even though at a considerable expense. As time went on, other railroads continued this correction work. It is still being prosecuted east and west of the Mississippi. Ten million dollars, fifty million dollars, looks like a lot of money to the stockholders of any company, when their president tells them that this is to be the cost of this new relief line, this reconstruction, that cut-off; but what is $1,000,000 when it is going to save more than $100,000 a year in the operation of your railroad? It is the big sight of the big situation that the railroads make nowadays at this reconstruction work.

Mr. Harriman, with his transcontinentals from the Mississippi watersheds west, was almost the pioneer in this work of wholesale reconstruction. The wholesale operating benefits that have resulted from it in the case of his group of Pacifics have been largely responsible for his preeminence in the railroad world. And yet, once his method was tried, it all seemed simpler than A, B, C.

Take the case of the Lucin cut-off on his Southern Pacific. When the Union Pacific was being pushed across the plains and threaded over the Rockies and the Sierras, the Great Salt Lake of Utah lay directly in its path. The railroad did the obvious thing and carefully made a detour around the lake. When Mr. Harriman took over the Union Pacific, then in a state of physical decadence, and linked it with his Southern Pacific, and surveyed the situation carefully, he decreed that the Great Salt Lake should no longer cause a trunk-line railroad to double in its path. He caused a line to be surveyed direct across the marshy lake from Ogden to Lucin and when that was done he had a line--on paper--103 miles long as against 147 miles by the old line. The engineer hesitated, but Harriman urged and they courageously began the construction of miles and miles of embankment and of trestle. Then new difficulties arose. Sink-holes developed. In a few minutes structures that had been the work of long months silently disappeared. The engineers in charge came to Harriman.

"It is not possible," they told him.

"You must carry it through whether it is possible or not," Harriman replied.

Eventually they carried it through.

When it was done, the Union Pacific had not only shortened its transcontinental line 44 miles, but it had eliminated more than 1,500 feet of heavy grade and 3,919 degrees of curvature. An operating economy of between $900,000 and $1,000,000 a year had been effected and the stockholders of the company had a good investment for the $10,000,000 that the Lucin cut-off had cost them.

Nor was that all on the Union Pacific. On other sections of its main line similar reconstruction work has added to the economy of operation by millions of dollars each year. For twenty miles west from Omaha, where the old historic transcontinental formerly dipped south to avoid a series of undulating hills, the new Lane cut-off cuts squarely across them--20 miles of deep cuts and heavy fills--"heavy railroad," as the engineers like to put it. And again, where the old line twisted and wound itself over the Black Hills, and wobbled unsteadily through Wyoming, the reconstruction engineers pressed their work.

[Illustration: WHERE HARRIMAN STRETCHED THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC IN A STRAIGHT LINE ACROSS THE GREAT SALT LAKE]

[Illustration: LINE REVISION ON THE NEW YORK CENTRAL--TUNNELLING THROUGH THE BASES OF THESE JUTTING PEAKS ALONG THE HUDSON RIVER DOES AWAY WITH SHARP AND DANGEROUS CURVES]

[Illustration: IMPRESSIVE GRADE REVISION ON THE UNION PACIFIC IN THE BLACK HILLS OF WYOMING. THE DISCARDED LINE MAY BE SEEN AT THE RIGHT]

It is not generally understood that the summit of the Union Pacific is in the Black Hills, which are the first foothill range of the Rockies, rather than in the mountain crest beyond. The Black Hills have always been a baffling proposition, with their short, steep slopes. The engineers wrinkled their brows at the thought of correcting the old line through there, but Harriman simply said that they must, that the board--which meant E. H. Harriman himself--had directed that 247 feet be cut from the road's crest there; and 247 feet, almost to the inch, was cut. It took giant fills and embankments and an army of men but the grades were brought to a minimum for a Rocky Mountain stretch. Wooden trestles, old and affording a constant fire-risk, were swallowed up in embankments; a single slice through a hill-top, a quarter of a mile long and eighty feet deep, did its part in reducing the grades; antiquated cars disappeared before equipment of the modern class; dilapidated shanties were supplanted by fine, permanent railroad stations. The new Union Pacific is a monument to the reconstruction engineer--and to E. H. Harriman.

The Canadian Pacific Railway, while traversing but one small northeastern corner of the United States, is essentially an American railroad, both in equipment and in operation. It forms an important half of that all-British Red Line encircling the globe, of which any Englishman is so very proud.

When the Canadian Pacific Railway was completing its last link in this unbroken line of rails from St. John, N. B., and Montreal, to Vancouver, the question of grades was indeed a secondary one. The vital thing was to cut the line through, and to that end great sacrifices of grade efficiency were made. So that when the line was through, and the first Imperial Limited was making its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific over a single railroad system, it was indeed a line with structural defects. At one point--the famous Big Hill, near Field, Alta.--in order to overcome the steep Rocky Mountain climbs, it was necessary to use from four to six engines for comparatively light freight and passenger trains. And at that, it was difficult to attain a speed of more than four or five miles an hour.

Within the last three years, this fearful grade has been corrected by the very first spiral tunnels ever built upon the American continent. Spiral tunnel construction of this kind is not new. It has been used with remarkable success by the railroads of Continental Europe, in piercing the High-Alpine boundaries between France, Germany, Austria, and Italy.

Coming from the east on the Canadian Pacific Railway, the train first enters the spiral tunnel--they call it the "corkscrew" out in Alberta--under Cathedral Mountain. This first bore is some 3,200 feet in length. Emerging from it, the train runs back east across the Kicking Horse River, then enters the eastern spiral tunnel, and after describing an elliptic curve, emerges, and again crosses the Kicking Horse westward.

This whole thing is a perfect maze--the railroad doubling back upon itself twice, tunnelling under two mountains, and crossing the river twice in order to cut down the grade. The work cost $1,500,000. The mere cost of the explosives came to over $250,000. It was one of the really great tunnel jobs of the world. Yet despite the complicated work caused by the spiral shape of the tunnels, they met exactly. The worth of the thing to the Canadian Pacific is shown in the fact that those same trains that formerly required four to six engines, are now handled easily over this Big-Hill grade with but two engines, and at a speed of about twenty-five miles an hour.

Other railroads by the dozen, whose lines traverse mountainous or even hilly country, are engaged in this proposition of lowering their grades.

F. D. Underwood, president of the Erie, and known as one of the ablest operating heads in this country, has been engaged in cutting off some of the heavy hill-climbs on that old-time route from the seaboard to the lakes. Underwood has already seen Erie's hopes of success in developing the property as essentially a freighter and for the immediate improvement of that portion of its facilities he has built three new relief lines, a small stretch near Chautauqua Lake in western New York, and then through the upper Genesee Valley, the third and most important eastward from a point near Port Jervis and piercing the summit of the Shawangunk Mountains.

The line through the Genesee Valley extends from Hunts, on the Buffalo division, about 20 miles west of Hornell, to Hinsdale on the main line, and is 33 miles long. It cuts off a heavy grade between Hornell and Hinsdale on the main line--a little over one per cent--for both east-bound and west-bound freight. At that particular point, Erie's west-bound freight approximates 75 per cent of the east-bound, and so the new line recognizes that fact by establishing the west-bound maximum grade at 3-10 of one per cent, as against a maximum of 2-10 of one per cent in the other direction. Brought to a plain understanding, a single locomotive has no difficulty in handling 80 cars, each bearing 40 tons of coal, over this new low-grade line. To take one-half that load over the old main line required a pusher.

On the east end of the line, where Erie's engineers built their greatest low-grade cut-off, the coal rolls down to the seaboard in such quantities as to make the west-bound tonnage only a quarter of the east-bound; so the reconstruction engineers were satisfied with a maximum west-bound grade at 6-10 of one per cent as against the maximum of 2-10 east-bound, in the direction of the heavy traffic. The cut-off, which is double-tracked and is 42-1/2 miles long, increases the distance from New York to Chicago 8 miles; but this is not an essential fact, for, like the Genesee Valley Road it is built exclusively for freight service, and not only almost triples the hauling capacity of a locomotive but actually permits of faster running time for the freight trains between Jersey City and Port Jervis. To build the cut-off required a really great expenditure, for like all these new lines it was "heavy work," embracing a tunnel nearly a mile long under the crest of the Shawangunk Ridge, and a steel trestle over the Moodna Valley, 3,200 feet in length and 190 feet high. Still President Underwood can contemplate his locomotives hauling three times their old loads over it. The economy of such a proposition becomes apparent upon the face of it.

The Baltimore & Ohio, the Southern, and the Norfolk & Western have recently lowered their grades and straightened their curves in similar fashion; the Lehigh Valley, by the erection of a great new bridge at Towanda, Pa., has taken a bad link out of its main line; the Chicago & Alton, when the engineers told it that it must abandon miles upon miles of its main line (for long years its pride) and build anew, told those engineers to go ahead. Stretch by stretch the old road was revamped to meet in every way modern conditions. A steel bridge across the Missouri, which was the first steel bridge built in America, and which cost $500,000, was sent to the scrap-heap while the old-timers groaned. "That which yesterday was a railroad marvel becomes a curiosity to-morrow,"

observes Frank H. Spearman, in speaking of this very thing.

The rebuilding of the Chicago & Alton was a clean-cut affair. The 70-pound rails were torn from the main line and sent to sidings and branch lines in favor of the 80-pound rails; for while men were tearing at the tracks, the shops were working overtime; 55-ton freight engines that could haul 30 cars were to give way to 165-ton motive power, capable of picking up and carrying a hundred cars with ease. That was why the old bridge had to go in favor of one which cost an even million dollars. And when the Alton built heavy new bridges at dozens of other points besides the Missouri, it built them after the new fashion, with solid rock ballast floor, affording additional comfort and safety to its patrons.

In a flat State like Illinois there were no very serious grade defects to be corrected, but through the gentle undulations of rolling country the line twisted and turned like a lazy brook. The rebuilders stopped that.

When they were done there was a single section of 40 miles, straight as the arrow flies, and many tangents of from 15 to 29 miles. In some cases when the trains were transferred to the completed line, the old, spindly, wobbly affair could be seen for miles in roadbed, to the one side or the other of the new. In some cases, this abandoned right-of-way was sold to interurban electric railroads; in one particular case one of the abandoned bridges was included in the sale.

The Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western is one of the old time Eastern Roads that have waxed immensely prosperous with the years. Originally built as an anthracite coal carrier from the Eastern Pennsylvania Mountains to the seaboard, it has developed into a through freight and passenger carrier of importance. The old-time engineer knew how to plan good railroads; the Pennsylvania to-day is building its new low-grade freight line on the very surveys made by its pioneer surveyors three-quarters of a century ago; but, as we have already intimated, those railroads were financially weak.

Early annual reports of the Pennsylvania tell how its stock was peddled in Philadelphia from house to house--up one street and down another--and how sometimes two houses joined together to buy a single share. Money was not plentiful in the middle of the last century.

So the Lackawanna engineers were compelled to build their road in semi-mountainous districts, along the lines of least resistance, rather than by the most direct routes. As it came east from Scranton over the Pocono Mountains it found its way in a roundabout course to the middle of Northern New Jersey. The road wound south and then wound north again, its grades were steep, some of its curves were short, and it dipped through two tunnels--one at Oxford Furnace, the other at Manunka Chunk.

To iron out those time-taking dips, the sharp curves, the grades, and the tunnel, the Lackawanna cut-off--the "heaviest" bit of railroad in the world--was begun three years ago. A new route 28-1/2 miles long was surveyed diagonally across from Port Morris on the main line in New Jersey to the main line again at the Delaware Water Gap. Despite the fact that it must cross the watersheds diagonally--the watersheds formed by deep valleys and high rocky ridges--the line as surveyed and built is only three miles longer than an absolute air-line. It shortens the Lackawanna's main stem from New York to Buffalo--already the shortest route between these two cities--by 15 miles, and brings that busy lake port a trifle within 400 miles from the seaboard.

To cross those watersheds at a sharp diagonal meant "heavy work"; and the engineers, to run their straight-cut, low-grade line, found that they would have to make tremendous cuts and fills--these last alone totalling 14,600,00 cubic yards. The Lackawanna's engineers will give you a faint idea of the stupendous size of these embankments. To build them up of stone and earth at the rate of a cartload a minute for each working-day of the year would require 81 years for the job. To do it in less than three years has meant the employment of whole trains of dump-cars, the purchase of 600-acre farms for single borrow-pits, the energy and administration of real engineers.

There have been cuts through solid rock, 65 bridges and culverts to be wrought of concrete, a single embankment (at the Pequest River) three miles in length, 110 feet high, and 300 feet wide at its base. The traveller who rides over the completed double-track road will have but a faint idea of the human labor and the human energy that have gone to construct it.

The great railroad that traverses the State of Pennsylvania is another monument to the engineer. The Pennsylvania Railroad was no wobbly affair at any time. Its grades and curves, considering the character of the country through which its trunk rests, are not excessive. It has been a good standard railroad for a good many years past. But in 1902, the Pennsylvania found that its troubles rested in the volume of traffic that was being offered it. Over its middle division from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh it was handling as much tonnage as J. J. Hill's entire Great Northern system. The heavy tonnage business began to clog the road's fast passenger traffic (its especial pride) and the fast freight traffic (the mainstay of its shippers), and appeal was made to the reconstruction engineers.

It was no slight appeal at that. Pittsburgh, handling 400,000 freight cars a month, was clogged, congested with such streams as had never before tried to crowd through that narrow neck of the Pennsylvania's bottle and the orders that went forth for relief were emphatic. Vice-presidents, general managers, superintendents and general superintendents, and engineers of every sort crowded into the president's office in Broad Street Station, and out of that conference the plans for an exclusively low-grade freight line from New York to Pittsburgh and for the traffic relief of Pittsburgh itself were born.

Every large city has become, in a sense, a bottle-neck for the important railroads that pierce it. In some cases like Chicago or St. Louis or Kansas City or Indianapolis, the situation has been solved by the creation of belt-line freight railroads partly or entirely encircling the town. At Buffalo, the New York Central lines have built a connecting line to enable through traffic to escape the congestion of city yards and terminals, while at New Haven, the road of the same name has recently spent several million dollars in enlarging its narrow throat in the middle of the town.

But nowhere else did the situation approach that at Pittsburgh. Through the Pennsylvania's passenger station there poured not only an abnormally heavy passenger traffic, owing to a heavy suburban service, but every pound of freight bound between the parent company and its two great subsidiaries, the Panhandle and the Fort Wayne. There were further complications right at the station, owing to the proximity of two of the very worst grade-crossings in America, where Penn and Liberty Avenues swept their busy tides of city traffic all day long over the Fort Wayne's main line tracks. It was a problem that called for the best in engineering skill--and received it.

The Pennsylvania dug deep into its pocket-book and solved the problem magnificently. It began by going back to the vicinity of its great Pitcairn freight-yards at the east of the city, and from them building two connecting laterals (the one to the south and across the Monongahela River to connect with the Panhandle tracks, the other to the north--known as the Brilliant cut-off) across the Alleghany and connecting with the tracks of the West Penn Railroad, which in turn connected with those of the Fort Wayne in the one-time city of Allegheny. That sounds simple, but it was in reality a fearfully expensive undertaking. The mile of Brilliant cut-off, "heavy work" every inch of it, cost $5,500,000, and is to-day the most expensive mile of railroad track in the world.

But the gripping hand was off the traffic throat of Pittsburgh and commercial Pittsburgh breathed more easily once again. The Union Station and its approach tracks were restored to passenger uses; and in the course of things the Pennsylvania tore down the old station, built a new one, and wiped out the two wicked city crossings, as with the stroke of an Aladdin's hand.

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