Landrail

“ From sea level to the summit of the range, the railroad is conspicuous for its heavy grade—about four per cent.—its sharp curves, its cuts and tunnels, but above all for the magnificent scenery everywhere visible. From the car window one may look over precipitous cliffs into yawning abysses far below the track on which the train slowly and carefully winds its way. On the beetling rocks above, in the dark and wild gorge below—what a wealth of vegetation, what luxuriance of growth, what a gorgeous display of vari-colored fruit and flower, of delicate fern and majestic palm! ”

“ Frequently the railway is the first pioneer in opening up a district for settlement, being built to reach a wealthy mine or a petroleum-field, and as the railway penetrates mile after mile into the unoccupied valley, little towns spring up alongside it. In this way the hoarse bray of the railway-engine awakens the sleeping echoes of mountain glen or river valley before the sound of the settler's axe is heard or the smoke of the emigrant's camp-fire seen. ”

“ Cost of a Single-track Road—Financing—Securing a Charter—Survey-work and its Dangers—Grades—Construction—Track-laying.
The railroad has its beginning in the inspiration and in the imagination of men. Perchance a great tract of country, rich in possibilities, stands undeveloped for lack of transportation facilities. The living arm of the railroad will bring to it both strength and growth. It will bring to it the materials, the men, and the machinery needed for its development. ”

“ A roadside enigma that doubtless puzzled our forefathers, and afforded food for discussion when journeying in these parts, the railway traveller misses them and much else besides as he is whirled through the land at a speed that only permits of a blurred impression of fields and woods, of rivers and hills, of church towers, towns, hamlets, and farmsteads—that is, when the train is not rushing through a cutting, or plunging into a darksome tunnel. In a scenic sense between the Great North Road and the Great Northern Railway is a vast gulf! ”

“ There is the unfathomable fascination of romance connected with the construction of great railways, though little is known of the beginning and the growth of the great trunk roads of the world; of the heavy tax which their construction imposed upon the ingenuity, skill and resource of their builders. Speeding along swiftly in a luxurious Pullman car over a road-bed as smooth as an asphalt pavement conveys no impression of the perils and dangers faced or of the infinite labour expended in the making of that steel highway. ”

“ The railway winds in and out among them with little inexplicable deviations and side-twists, much as a buck walks through a forest-glade, sidling and crossing uneasily in what appears to be a plain way. Only when the track has rounded another shoulder or two, a backward and upward glance at some menacing slope shows why the train did not take the easier-looking road on the other side of the gorge. ”

“ Our drives from up-country are sometimes held up a whole season when a bad jam forms in dry times. Every year in dynamiting these jams thousands of feet of logs are shattered. More are split on the ledges. We have agreed that we need a railroad. Considering our losses, we can afford to pay well for having our logs hauled to the smooth water. If you and your friends will finance and build such a road, we'll give you free right of way, turn over to you annually twenty million feet of timber for your log trains, and give you the haul of all our crews and camp supplies. ”

“ Outside are factories, and railroad yards, and everywhere tall black chimneys, vomiting their heavy, muddy smoke. But always the train glides on like some swift, smooth river. Now the track is elevated, now depressed. You run over bridges or under them, crossing streets and other railroads. At last you dive into a tunnel and presently emerging, coast slowly along be [ 515] side an endless concrete platform raised to the level of the car floor. ”

“ The main line of railway runs, like an iron vertebra, a kind of backbone, from north to south; the directors of the southern line of railway, realising the necessity of extension, and desirous of giving easy access to all parts of the country, have laid down branch lines in all directions, running out like the arms of an octopus, grasping at distant towns and villages, and halting at the most beautiful secluded spots in the inmost quarters of the land. ”

“ The prairies have a monotony of their own. Your eye searches all round the horizon for the joyous blue peak of a far-off mountain. You cannot even see a tree. The railway itself is tiresome in its straight-lined and dead-level uniformity. A deep cut, a high embankment, a heavy grade, or a sharp curve, would be a relief. The only variety we had was that of the violent motion caused by the displacement of the ties by frost. This was so great at times as to set all the cars dancing, and almost to throw the passengers from their seats. ”

“ It enters into the construction of rails, locomotives, box cars, passenger coaches, telegraph wires, block signal devices, and all the countless other things that, in this age of steel and wheels, go into that great expression of the triumph of mind over matter—the modern railroad. ”

“ The thirty-and forty-storied buildings in our big cities, the underground railways, the tubes under the rivers, the tremendous suspension bridges, the automobile carriages and business trucks,—not to mention the railroad trains that are to run on one rail at a speed of a hundred miles an hour. ”

“ To secure perfect safety in ascending and descending such a tremendous grade, the track is composed of three rails bolted to a trestle of heavy timbers, the centre rail being an immense wrought-iron ladder, with rounds four inches apart, into which the cogs of the locomotive drive-wheel fit, and thus drag the train up the steep as well as control it, with aid of air-brakes, in making the descent. One and a half hours are consumed in making the round trip, and the fare is six dollars, but the view from the summit is so magnificent that it fully justifies the expense. ”

“ Today audacious railways are entering it, crawling up its mountain slopes, rounding its dizzy precipices, spanning its valleys on iron cobwebs, piercing its hills with tunnels. Drifts are opened in its coal seams, to which iron tracks shoot away from the main line; in the woods is seen the gleam of the engineer's level, is heard the rattle of heavily-laden wagons on the newly-made roads ”

“ One can see the railway growing in the fullest sense of the word—can see the thin, sinuous ribbon of steel crawling over the flat prairie, across spidery bridges, through ravine-like rock-cuts, gloomy tunnels, and along lofty embankments. ”

“ No one would travel in that manner who could help it—who had time to go leisurely over hills and between hedges, instead of through tunnels and between banks: at least those who would, have no sense of beauty so acute as that we need consult it at the station. The railroad is in all its relations a matter of earnest business, to be got through as soon as possible. It transmutes a man from a traveller into a living parcel. ”

“ One hundred and twenty-five thousand miles of railway, fifteen thousand miles of navigable water, exclusive of the Great Lakes, and several thousand miles of canals are insufficient to transport this enormous production; thousands of miles of railway are therefore yearly built in order to keep pace with the growth of population and the settlement of new lands. ”

“ The road, the canal, and the railway have each their distinctive advantages; and it is worthy of note how they work together. From every railway station there must be a road to the adjacent towns and villages, and a better road than was once thought necessary. Horses are required as much as ever, although mails and post-chaises are no longer the glories of the road; and the post finds its way into every hamlet by the united agency of the road and the railway. ”

“ We are also told that the railway has reclaimed from nature immense tracts of land that were worthless except as to their possibilities, which once seemed too vague and remote to be considered and are to-day valuable ”

“ When your grandmother was a little girl, fast trains ran from coast to coast and slower ones climbed to towns high in the mountains. Super-highways for automobiles and trucks were something that only a few people even imagined then. So—if freight and passengers were going very far, they had to travel by train. Mountains gave the railroads a lot of trouble, because it was hard to dig wide roadbeds along the steep, rocky{80} hillsides or to push them through tunnels in solid stone. ”

“ The railway has a central rail which is cogged, and into this endless cog fits a wheel underneath the engine. This is really the driving wheel by which it slowly moves up the steep gradient. We passed farms, orchards and plantations, up and up. It is a curious sensation to find yourself steadily moving up without any effort of your own, but still up we went until we landed on a lovely plateau, with a charming hotel. The view from this mountain height was beyond description. We left the train and wandered into the woods and viewed our surroundings. ”

“ Said right of way is granted to said railroad to the extent of two hundred feet in width on each side of said railroad, where it may pass over the public lands, including, all necessary grounds for stations, buildings, workshops, and depots, machine shops, switches, side tracks, turn-tables, and water stations. ”

“ The Inland Waterways Commission finds as a reason for the decrease, the relations existing between the railways and the waterways. A railway, they consider, has two classes of advantages. First, those that come from natural conditions. A railroad line can be built in any direction to any part of the country except the extremely mountainous parts, while a river runs only in a single direction. ”

“ Never before had a railroad been built across so bleak a plain, a treeless and waterless expanse, stretching for hundreds of miles in a dead level, over which the winds drove at will the shifting sands, constantly threatening to bury any work which man ventured to lay upon the desert's broad breast. ”

“ You can build a logging railroad from the southern fringe of your timber north and up a ten per cent. grade on the far side of the Squaw Creek watershed, then west three miles around a spur of low hills, and then south eleven miles through the level country along the bay shore. If you want to reduce your Squaw Creek grade to say two per cent., figure on ten additional miles of railroad and a couple extra locomotives. You understand, of course, Colonel, that no Locomotive can haul a long trainload of redwood logs up a long, crooked, two per cent. ”

“ The roadway itself of a railroad depends for its value upon the traffic of the company, and not merely upon the narrow strip of land appropriated for the use of the road, and the bars and cross-ties thereon. ”

“ In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own railway platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when possibly a tramway thence to the dumping-room will be a recognised and necessary 'improvement.' When that day comes, shearers and washers will arrive by train from the coast-range, or the 'Never Never' country ”

“ In striking contrast to this luxury of transportation was the old-time method of travelling through these mountains. The roaring stream which the railroad follows and tries in vain to descend in equally rapid slope is now one of the most attractive features of the scenery of the pass. ”

“ The railway passes for miles through swamps, pools, ponds, and broken mud banks, till at length, bursting away altogether from the shore, it pushes directly out into the sea. Away goes the train of cars over the long viaduct, and the traveller within can scarcely understand the situation. The firm and even roll and the thunder of the wheels tell of solid ground beneath ”

“ The distant hazy mountains form a soft and beautiful background, with their dark sides and white, snow-crowned peaks; while in the foreground we behold as fine an example of railroad engineering as can be seen anywhere in the world. In climbing the mountains it is necessary for the tracks to wind and zigzag and cross themselves back and forth, until the train which first passes beneath the bridge a few minutes later dashes across the top of it a hundred feet or more higher up. ”

“ We know, as well as we know the sense of any phrase in the English language which has a historical meaning and application, what is meant when a railroad is spoken of in a law as a 'public highway.' We know that it refers to the immovable structure stretching across the country, graded and railed for the use of the locomotive and its train of cars. ”

“ A railroad in its physical aspect consists of the track that things run upon and the things that run upon the track. The track, in the broad sense in which we are now considering it, consists of far more than two steel rails set upon wooden ties or sleepers which, in turn, are set in a graded roadway. It means bridges, tunnels, switches, signals, terminal and intermediate stations, buildings, passenger and freight-houses, engine-houses, shops, and all the rest of it. ”

“ He is dreaming of the day when, a year or two hence, the railroad’s path shall have crowded itself into this impasse, and when the folk who dine luxuriously in the showy cars will fret because of the curve that spills their soup, and who never know of the man who was slipped down over a six-hundred-foot cliff in order that the railroad might find its way. ”