Iron road

“ But the railway, like most other great inventions, came about by the toil of hundreds of known and unknown workers, each adding his little or great advance, until at last some genius or some plodder, standing on their failures, could reach success. Both the characteristic features of the modern railway, the iron road and the steam motive power, developed gradually as necessity urged and groping experiment permitted.
The iron road came first. When men began to mine coal in the north of England, the need grew clear of better highways to bear the heavy cart-loads to market or riverside. ”

“ Modest though their pretensions were, however, they were found to be an immense improvement on the ordinary roads, insomuch that ten horses were found to be capable of working the traffic on railroads, which it required 400 horses to perform on a common road. These iron roads, therefore, began to multiply, and about the beginning of the present century they were largely employed in the coal-fields and mineral districts of the kingdom. ”

“ They constituted the first step towards the conversion of wooden rail-ways into an iron road, and Nicholas Wood thinks it very likely that the diminution of friction resulting from their use may have suggested the substitution of iron rails for wooden ones.
Cast-iron rails began to come into use about 1767. Their brittleness was, at first, found to be a great disadvantage; but this defect was subsequently overcome, to a certain extent, by the use of smaller waggons, which allowed of a better distribution of weight over the rail. ”

“ Meanwhile Senator Norbeck with his Custer State Park Commis{302}sion was working on a road approaching Rushmore from the opposite direction by way of Iron Mountain.
Iron Mountain Road is one of the country’s finest examples of what can be done with economical engineering. Engineer Charles E. Smith who laid it out hadn’t much money to spend. The highway runs along part of its highly beautiful journey between Keystone and Grace Coolidge Creek on two lanes that are widely separated. It climbs terrific grades on corkscrew uplifts built of pine logs. It is well paved, well graded and safe. ”

“ Railroad tracks now cover the ground it then occupied, and the cutting away of the bluff in that vicinity, to give place for some heavy industries that require to be near the water and the iron road, has completely changed the appearance of all the surroundings, even, of that once favorite resort of the marine element of the population of the town, so that not one trace of it remains, save in memory. ”

“ To the left of the river, looking up-stream at this point, the mountains slanted skyward like a roof, until lost in the hurrying scud four thousand feet above. To the right, however, was the old moraine, just mentioned, consisting of a desolate jumble of rock and gravel and silt overlaying the ice foot. On account of its broken character and the unstable nature of its foundation this bank was practically useless for road-building, and the only feasible route for steel rails was along the steep west wall. ”

“ In 1822 Gray added a diagram, showing a number of suggested lines of railway connecting the principal towns of England, and another in like manner bringing together the leading Irish centres. Gray pressed his pet scheme, ‘a general iron road,’ upon the attention of public men of every position. ”

“ We will not turn aside to visit the site of the “Sussex Bell,” or the remains of the Hammer Ponds that tell of the old iron-foundries and furnaces that were wont to make the surrounding hills resound and despoiled the dense woods of their noblest trees for the smelting of iron ore. We have no present business so far from the road in a place that has harboured no notorious evil-doer, nor has ever been the home of any distinguished man. ”

“ Our speed does not exceed thirty-five miles per hour, and I have never heard of breakages to permanent way resulting from this rate.” The agent to the Madras Railway Company says, “I have all along strongly advocated the use of cast-iron pot sleepers upon our lines of railway, believing that a road laid with iron was more easily and economically maintained, insured greater safety from accidents, and from its smoothness of surface, less prejudicial in its effects upon our rolling stock than any other form of roadway.” ”

“ The acclivities of the road may still be levelled, and its asperities smoothed, by the introduction of the more compact and durable materials of the British Roadway or Iron Bail. Such, however, has been the progressive nature of discovery in all ages, that we are only beginning to appreciate the immense advantages which would attend the introduction of a new system of roads or railways, laid upon a level or horizontal base, as admirably calculated to increase the power of the horse in a tenfold proportion by destroying friction—that bane to animal labour as now applied on the common road. ”

“ Although carts and rude wagons could be built 48 entirely of wood, there could be no marked advance in transportation until the development of mining in certain localities reduced the price of iron. With the increase of travel and trade, the old world coach and chaise and wain came into use, and iron for tire and brace became an imperative necessity. ”

“ To accomplish this, bars of iron are constructed of a suitable length, and laid upon the road, so that they present upwards a smooth surface; their extremities resting upon large blocks of stone firmly imbedded in the earth, called sleepers. These iron bars, which are called rails, are firmly connected end to end, and extend from sleeper to sleeper along the whole line of road, so as to form one continuous smooth track or line of iron surface, upon which the wheels of the carriage roll. ”

“ The connection between the production of iron and the care of highways was recognized by legislation as early as 1732, when Maryland excused men and slaves in the ironworks from labor on the public roads, though by the middle of the century owners of ironworks were obliged to detail one man out of every ten in their employ for such work. ”

“ The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. ”

“ There’s many a grave beside the U. Pay., behind us, an’ there’s more on ahead an’ more yet to be made, before the road goes through. ’Tis a big job an’ a cruel job an’ a long road to travel; but ’tis sich a job as is worth the dyin’ for anny day, say I—though I’d fair like to live jist to see the Cintral baten into Salt Lake an’ the U. Pay. track stretchin’ out clane across Nevady.”
[74] CHAPTER VI
MOVING DAY ALONG THE LINE
On marched the rails of the iron trail, at a giant’s stride of one to two miles in a day, as if trying to catch the tie-layers and the graders. ”

“ He conceived the idea of building the Iron Mountain railroad, and suggested it to the people of the county. He was by them nominated and elected to the General Assembly for the purpose of securing the passage of a bill for the establishment of that road.
In June, 1849, the cholera raged in Potosi. He was stricken down, and, while violently ill, his wife and infant daughter died of this disease. The following winter he served in the Missouri Legislature, and secured the passage of the bill for the Iron Mountain road. ”

“ ICELAND, 93 ICENI, the, 174 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, the, and the turnpike road, 90 INTERNAL-COMBUSTION ENGINE and gradients, 42; makes a crisis in road building, 91; and the need for new roads, 180, 195-6; danger of crossing roads confined to, and solution of difficulty, 198-9 IRELAND, Chester once the port for, 70 IRON INDUSTRY, the Wealden, 131 ISLAM, Western, influence of drift sand on roads of, 36 ITALY, marshes created by the Road in, 65 JERUSALEM, 70 JUNIPER HILL, near Dorking road, 149 JURA, the, gradients of roads in, 40 KENT, Roman road system in, 98 ”

“ So judicious was the selection of its site, and so great its utility, that a thriving town of the name of Ironbridge has grown up around it upon what, at the time of its erection, was a nameless part of "the waste of the manor of Madeley." And it is probable that the bridge will last for centuries to come. Thus, also, was the use of iron as an important material in bridge-building fairly initiated at Coalbrookdale by Abraham Darby, as the use of iron rails was by Richard Reynolds. ”

“ Now with railroads it is possible to bring food quickly from afar. No fertile area of the earth is inaccessible. Inland cities [70] may begin to rise. More life in more ways can be sustained than ever before. Nevertheless, the iron bridge is a premature sign. The material is defective. It is not hard enough to bear the strain of that host pressing upon life. Besides, by no process yet discovered can it be made fast enough.
“And I see what has not yet happened. I see whole cities built higher than the tower of Babel. Those are steel buildings, sheathed with brick and stone. ”

“ We’ve got people to feed.”
“Maybe we can slip away once, between times,” promised George’s mother.
“I can take you up, on one trip of the construction-train,” Engineer Richards proposed. “By the way they talk, they’ll keep me busy hauling iron. Eight miles of track calls for something over 300 car-loads of material, and they haven’t near enough iron on their dumps.”
The day dawned fine and snappy. When at six o’clock the construction-train pulled out with Terry and Virgie in the cab, its cars were black with people as well as rails and spikes and fastenings. ”

“ Father Wiliston and Toboso went down the hill, silently, with furtive, lawless steps through the cluster of houses in the hollow, called Ironville, and followed then the road up the chattering hidden brook. The road came from the shadows of this gorge at last to meadows and wide glimmering skies, and joined the highway to Redfield. Presently they came to where a grassy side road slipped into the highway from the right, out of a land of bush and swamp and small forest trees of twenty or thirty years' growth. ”

“ To this, it may be replied, that no iron bridge, made by a reliable company, has ever shown the slightest indication of any thing of the kind, though they have been used for many years in Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Canada, and nothing that we know in regard to iron gives us any reason to suppose that any thing of the kind ever will happen. But here, again, every thing turns upon the quality of the iron. ”

“ With the advent of railroads bridge-building became even a greater necessity than it had ever been before, and the use of iron has enabled engineers to grapple with and overcome difficulties which only fifty years ago would have been considered hopelessly insurmountable. In this modern use of iron advantage is taken of its great tensile strength, and many iron bridges, over which enormous trains of heavily-loaded cars pass hourly, look as though they were spun from gossamer threads, and yet are stronger than any structure of wood or stone would be. ”

“ The mountains block us off, north and south. This is the natural highway for the rails, I think. The Central Pacific will have just as bad a desert, in western Nevada, until we meet them. If we can bring up our water from behind, while we’re building, we’ll put the rails across, and sink wells to supply the engines and stations. I’ll be glad to find that the Percy Browne surveys are the best for the railroad. The iron track through, by the trail that he discovered, will be an eternal monument to his memory. ”

“ Iron bridges—excepting those slung on chains—can scarcely escape the reproach of ugliness. Vulcan himself must have forged the original, and infused into it something of his own deformity. But we have passed out of the stone into the iron age; the engineers have us in hand; and we must submit to a good deal of unloveliness for the sake of utility and cheapness. Stone bridges are works of architecture and art; wooden bridges have a certain rustic prettiness in the country; but the iron bridge of the railway harmonises with nothing. ”

“ There are some shabby and flimsy details of iron work, which mar the monumental effect of the great roadway itself, while the design of the iron stations at either end is grossly illiterate, and discreditable to the great work. Imitations in cast iron of stone capitals surmount and emphatically contradict posts profusely studded with bolt-heads; and other solecisms, alike against constructional reason and architectural tradition, are rife in these unfortunate edifices, which do what they can to vulgarize the great structure to which they give access. ”

“ Twenty years ago, under a traffic which constituted but a small fraction of the mileage which the same roads are performing to-day, iron rails became worn down and laminated with such rapidity that the cost of track repairs was enormous, and it was by no means uncommon for iron rails to be removed from the track worn out before they bad been subjected to a single season's wear. ”

“ As for the railroad, its case was hopeless. - 192 - It had to burrow a nick of its own through the base of Mount Willard, and out of the débris of this blasting the road makers built a series of fantastic rock piles, monuments to the heathen deities of Helter-Skelter, which serve to make the gateway in which these three jostle one another, road, railroad and river, more weird even than it was before.
But the gateway is as beautiful as it is fantastic. The road south to it comes along a smiling plain and the mountains draw in to meet it, indeed as if to bar it. ”