Railway embankment

“ The Victoria Embankment, which sweeps round from Blackfriars to Westminster, is a mile and a quarter long. Its river face consists of a great granite wall, 8 feet in thickness, with tunnels inside it for the carrying of sewers, water-mains, gas-pipes, etc., all of which can be reached without interfering with that splendid wide road beneath which the Underground Railway runs. There is a continuation of the Embankment on the south side from Westminster to Vauxhall, known as the Albert Embankment, while on the north it runs, with some interruptions, as far as Chelsea. ”

“ It was easy to imagine what would happen to the embankment when the rains came, to say nothing of the temporary track down on the floor of the plain, which we came upon only seven or eight miles out, with a work-train already using it. For there was the usual refrain of anything or any one connected with the Chinese Government: money was not available to build bridges across the gaps in the embankment and finish the line properly, and it was only in this imperfect form that the Suiyuan railway reached Paotou barely a month behind us. ”

“ But in the face of this, what has been the conduct of the Government to the Chester and Holyhead Railway Company? In the first place, it imposed conditions which greatly enhanced the cost of the Britannia Bridge. Then observe how it treated that line with reference to other matters. The Holyhead road runs for about half-a-mile near Conway upon an embankment constructed on the sea-shore. The Holyhead Company proposed to form its railway outside that embankment, thereby, in fact, widening the embankment and affording it protection from the sea. ”

“ The expensive bridging has been reduced to the minimum, however, for in some cases where the water is shallow the islands are linked together by a massive solid earthen embankment.
This section of the railway may be said to be amphibious in the full sense of the word. In fact, at one point the passenger in the train is carried beyond the sight of land. The engineer had to build his structure sufficiently strong and solid as to combat the forces of wind and wave, and at a level beyond the reach of the spray. ”

“ It is obvious the care that is bestowed upon a reservoir embankment, such as the damping, punning, rolling, mixing of the material, and raising it in layers, is not necessary in a railway or ordinary embankment; however, certain precautions should be observed and may be effected at a small cost, and it is well to remember that errors of construction will cause undue strain upon particular parts. ”

“ An embankment-bank, or fill, is the reverse of a cutting, being an artificial mound of earth on which the railway is taken across depressions in the surface of the ground. An endeavour is made so to plan the works of a railway that the quantity of earth excavated in cuttings shall be equal to the quantity required for the embankments; but this is not always practicable, and it is sometimes advantageous to obtain the earth from some source close to the embankment rather than incur the expense of hauling it from a distant cutting. ”

“ It is a simple and comparatively inexpensive matter to rebuild a drain before the earth filling is brought forward, but it is a costly work to open out an embankment, and rebuild a culvert afterwards. Unless the seat of an embankment is well drained and kept free from the accumulation of running water, the earthwork will be exposed to washing away of the lower layers, and consequent subsidence. ”

“ Thus, on the Leeds and Bradford Extension, about 600 tons of stone and earth were daily cast into an embankment near Bingley, p. 139and each morning the stuff thrown in on the preceding day was found to have disappeared. This went on for many weeks, the bank, however, gradually advancing, and forcing up on either side a spongy black ridge of moss. On the South-Western Railway a heavy embankment, about fifty feet high, crossed a piece of ground near Newham, the surface of which seemed to be perfectly sound and firm. Twenty feet, however, beneath the surface an old bog lay concealed ”

“ A similar embankment, and another cutting of 300 yards in length, over which is one bridge, introduce us to the Madeley Embankment, one of the heaviest on the line, being three quarters of a mile in length, and, in some places, from forty to fifty feet above the fields below. In crossing it the railway passes orer two bridges.
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Proceeding along this great work, we enter the county of Staffordshire. The eye is attracted to the right by a group of houses, in front of which is a large piece of water; the most prominent is Mr. ”

“ Railway embankments and bridges must not be touched. Embassy must in no circumstances be compromised."
(Signed) "Representative of General Staff."
And thereafter American railway bridges and embankments were safe, though their owners may not have been aware of the fact at the time. ”

“ The results of the working of railways have been in many respects different from those anticipated by their projectors. One of the most unexpected has been the growth of an immense passenger-traffic. The Stockton p. viiand Darlington line was projected as a coal line only, and the Liverpool and Manchester as a merchandise line. Passengers were not taken into account as a source of revenue, for at the time of their projection, it was not believed that people would trust themselves to be drawn upon a railway by an “explosive machine,” as the locomotive was described to be. ”

“ Independently of the injury which this obstinacy has ever since inflicted upon the town, it cost the railway company a loss in money of more than a million sterling, a lengthened and inferior section of railway, a tunnel 2,423 yards long (only 217 less than a mile and a-half) , which, during its construction, ruined four contractors and caused the deaths of upwards of a hundred working men. Finally, the obstinacy of Northampton delayed the opening through of the railway from London to Birmingham for fully two years. No wonder, then, that its present generation of men is ashamed of the deed. ”

“ And I believe also that, considering the absence of most of the causes of accidents, there will even be less liability of interruption and less delay in the average resulting from accidents than in the ordinary double locomotive railway.
By the modification of the gradients and by reducing the curves to 1,000 feet radius where any great advantage can be gained by so doing, and by constructing the cuttings, embankments, tunnels, and viaducts for a single line, a considerable saving may be effected in the first cost. ”

“ It cannot reasonably be contended that a railroad cannot be maintained and operated as safely and as conveniently over a bridge, trestle, culvert, or other opening calculated to admit the passage of surface water, as upon a solid embankment, or that there is any substantial advantage in favor of the latter except that it avoids the expenditure necessary to be made for the construction and maintenance of openings in order that the embankment shall no longer be the occasion of injury to the lands of others. ”

“ Young men who had begun by chopping in the bush grew into contractors for getting out ties for the track-layers, and finally themselves took contracts for actual building of the railway over rock and boulders, through mountain vastnesses and quaking bogs until the steel reached tide water. It was in itself an act of splendid audacity for a people of less than four millions in number to start on the task of throwing a railway across an immense and almost uninhabited continent to the shores of the Western sea. ”

“ But no doubt there will be trouble in getting the trains through; it is impossible to guard such an enormous length of line. The utmost that can be done will be to have detachments posted at all the bridges whose destruction would cause serious delay. We can hardly doubt that rails will be pulled up and culverts destroyed, for this can be done by two or three men working at night. But of course each train going up will carry a few rails and a couple of balks of timber, tools, and three or four railway men, and the repairs can be executed with only a very short delay. ”

“ The result, then, is, that, upon the existing traffic of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, railways are affecting a direct saving to the people of not less than forty million pounds per annum; and that sum exceeds by about fifty per cent the entire interest of our national debt. It may be said, therefore, that the railway system neutralizes to the people the bad effects of the debt with which the state is incumbered. ”

“ The Ministry held that very large savings could be effected by standardisation of methods and machinery, and by introducing co-operative working methods. The railways were regarded as neither adequate nor entirely suitable to meet the growing needs of the community, neither for agriculture, industry, nor housing. It was further proposed to modernise canals and waterways, to bring them into line with modern needs. Railway property was stated to amount to £1,200,000,000, and the outgoings and incomings of the railway companies to exceed £500,000,000 a year. ”

“ Later on these reasonable people found justification for their view in the fact that construction was costing in some sections half-a-million a mile—though even they would have gasped if they knew that in after years a single tunnel in the mountains was to cost over eight millions to construct. There were some who considered that the free gift to the company of several hundred miles of railway, built by the Government over a term of years, was too generous. ”

“ The condition of many of our great freight terminals is still one of difficulty and results in imposing, large costs on the public for inward-bound freight, and on the railways for outward-bound freight. Owing to the growth of our large cities and the great increase in the volume of traffic, particularly in perishables, the problem is not only difficult of solution, but in some cases not wholly solvable by railway action alone. ”

“ The road bed is well built, laid with metals to a metre-gauge, and ballasted heavily. All earthworks are carried out on liberal lines, and the bridges are built throughout of steel.
When the main range is gained the line becomes more devious, the banks are sharper and more numerous, the short tunnels and the bridges across the rivers more frequent, for the location caused the line to swing from bank to bank as being more economical construction than to blast and carve a way for the line through the solid rock of the cliffs. At places the rises became so abrupt as to defy operation by adhesion. ”

“ The immense loss and annoyance through this obstruction is greatly aggrevated by the street being constantly torn up in connection with sewer, gas, water, steam heating and other pipes. The surface and elevated railways offer inconvenient and insufficient accommodation to passengers between that portion of the city devoted to business and that occupied by residences, yet they are crowded to their utmost capacity, because nothing better is afforded. ”

“ On a working railway, the train service must be kept going, irrespective of renewals, and very often the best that can be done is to reduce the double line to single line working at the site of the operations. It is not always expedient or possible to make a temporary bridge and diverted line for traffic purposes, as the expenditure to be incurred might be too great to warrant the outlay, or there may be local difficulties to effectually prevent the introduction of a provisional structure. ”

“ They must also be permitted to earn enough to assure capital that they can pay interest and principal of the heavy additional loans asked. By the light of this practical, unchangeable fact the railway regulation of the future must be guided. If it is not, then congestion and a general paralysis of trade, costing the country more than double its whole bill for transportation cannot be avoided. ”

“ The taking down of one half of the old structure may necessitate the removal of stays and bracing affecting the stability of the half remaining to carry the traffic, and thus render temporary shoring and bracing necessary. The erection of the new work in such a limited space has to be watched with great care; all cranes, lifting appliances, and scaffolding must be kept clear of vehicles moving over the running-line, and very frequently it is found prudent to cease erecting operations during the passage of a train. ”

“ The expense of a little additional weight of cast iron, in the first instance, will be greatly compensated in the end, by avoiding frequent repairs, and will thereby be amply repaid, while the expense of laying the road, and other contingencies, are much the same in the light as in the heavy rail. The mode of fixing is another point of great importance in the construction of a substantial railway. In the early123 practice of laying railways, the value of this new discovery was for a time lost to the public, owing to the intricacy and difficulty of this part of the design. ”

“ Along such lines there always had been large traffic, and it was no doubt greatly stimulated by the facilities which the new mode of locomotion afforded for its expansion. But as fresh railways were completed, and as the capital invested in them increased, the profits receded. Even at the present time, with larger receipts per mile than have ever been taken, the position of railway investment is almost from every point of view, unsatisfactory. ”