Wagon track

“ It must also be provided with two firm and strong chains, one on each side, which can be depended on to check the wagon even where it has a long track to run upon. It is meant to run on planks set with a downward slope, but one must be careful to keep the wheels from skidding off the planks. ”

“ If a wagon comes along so heavily laden that I cannot pass it, the driver should stop at a convenient place to let me go by. [227] A man on foot, or on horseback, or in a light trap, cannot insist upon a teamster with a heavy load giving up part of the beaten track, if there be sufficient room to pass without his doing so. ”

“ If we study the De Witt Clinton train, we shall learn several things. Both the engine and the coaches were small and light compared with those used now. With the great speed of to-day, all the parts of a train must be very heavy in order to cling to the track. The engine of those days had four light driving wheels, and the engineer, it would seem, had to operate his engine while facing wind and storm. The cab looks very much like a common express wagon made heavier than usual; and if we look at the passenger wagons, we shall see why passenger cars are called coaches. ”

“ There is not the faintest indication of a breeze, and the iron tires of a heavy freight wagon, laboring slowly along, ring out like the music of tiny bells, close and smooth, as though the master of the baton were directing a legato movement. The driver walks by the side of his team, thrashing one hand against his shoulder and holding the lines with the other; the horses are half hidden in the steam of their own providing and are frosted even to their flanks. Thunder and Mars! but it is cold! and a cloud of cold air rushes into the car with me. ”

“ As we gaze there is another surprise in store. Like a tiny plaything, a train emerges from a bend in the cliffs and with little infantile puffs of smoke crawls along the rails which one now sees running along the narrow river bank. Clinging close to every twist and turn the train proceeds. There is scarcely sufficient space between the rugged walls and the surging river for the single track. At one point the width of the ledge is but 10 yards and the track has been built out over the water. The river dashes madly through; the engine sways from side to side as it drags its heavy load onward. ”

“ To prevent danger in case the brakes should fail to control a train coming down the incline of the roadway, the car-tracks are kept at the same level for the last 600 feet on each approach, which brings them out at about the level of the elevated roads. The cars are to be propelled by means of an endless wire rope, which will run between the rails of each track, over grooved wheels, set upright 221⁄2 feet apart. ”

“ The old stage wagons succeeding to the pack-horses, which carried goods and occasionally passengers stowed away, were a curiosity. A long-bodied wagon, with loose canvas tilt, wheels of great breadth, so as to be independent of ruts, except the very broadest; with a series of four or five iron tires or hoops round the feloes, and the whole drawn by eight or ten horses, two abreast with a driver riding on a pony with a long whip, which gave him command of the whole team! Average pace about 1 1/2 to 2 miles an hour, including stoppages, as taken from old time tallies, for their journeys! ”

“ Starting off we found a fairly good trail which we could have used to advantage, except for our wide-tread wagon and wide tires. We are just beginning to find almost all the vehicles in this part of the country are standard tread, and so plan to have our wagon cut down at the first opportunity. We made about twelve miles by noon and camped on the open range for lunch. ”

“ In this connection I find myself thinking about the various modes of travel resorted to in those primitive days, when roads and bridges as we have them today were still far in the future. The wagons were generally drawn by cattle teams, from two to five yokes to the wagon. The number of wagons would be all the way from one to one hundred. The larger trains were difficult to pass, as they took up the road for so long a distance that sometimes we would move on in the night in order to get past them. ”

“ He at once ordered the command to dismount and lead the horses down the mountain side. The wagon train was a mile in the rear, and when it came up one of the drivers asked, “How are we going down there?”
[Pg 46] “Run down, slide down, or fall down; any way to get down,” said I.
“We can never do it; it’s too steep; the wagons will run over the mules,” said another wagon master.
“I guess not; the mules have got to keep out of the way,” was my reply.
I told Wilson, the chief wagon master, to bring on his mess wagon, which was at the head of the train, and I would try the experiment at least. ”

“ Here and there wagons pushed on beyond the established limit, and, finding the way not more desperate than much of the preceding "road," had gone on and on, until at last wagons came down the western slopes of the Alleghenies, and wagon traffic began to be considered possible—much to the chagrin of the cursing pack-horse men. No sooner was this fact accomplished than some attention was paid to the road. The wagons could not go everywhere the ponies or even the heavy carts had gone. They could not climb the steep knolls and remain on the rocky ridges. ”

“ At the height of the season, when travel was heavy and roads dry, the Standard Concord Coach was employed. At other times, a vehicle commonly termed a “mud wagon” was put to use. During this era of horse-drawn vehicles, the trains of pack mules were, of course, replaced by great freight wagons. Today, in driving over the old wagon roads, one is led to wonder how passenger vehicles succeeded in passing the great freight outfits. ”

“ The column carried no lights, and as the night shut down the road under the horses’ feet became almost invisible to the eyes of the drivers sitting on their horses or box seats. Each lead driver had to be content to follow close on the tracks of the wagon in front of him, to hold his tired horses up when they stumbled, to halt them quickly when the wagon ahead halted, to move them on again instantly on the other vehicle starting. ”

“ Again and again the wagon train becomes a striking pictorial motif, and, whether it is seen creeping across the prairie, following the bank of a river, climbing toward a pass in the mountains, stretching out, a thin black chain of silhouettes on the horizon, curving itself along the palisade-like walls of an arroyo, or halted in snow against a background of Oregon pines, it always adds emphasis10 to the intense drama of the pioneers battling against the hardships of the trail in ’48 and ’49. ”

“ By your single rail and narrow cars you have lightened many-fold the weight of trains, and enlarged proportionally the carrying capacity over steam roads, as at present existing, as you make a double-track road out of a single-standard gauge track. ”

“ Each one of our wagons was drawn by six yoke, or twelve oxen, and contained from five to six thousand pounds of freight, and there was but one wagon to each team. The time had not yet come when, what was afterward adopted, trail wagons were in use. This means two or three wagons lashed together and drawn by one team. Twenty-five of our wagons and teams formed what was called a train, and these trains were scattered along the road at intervals of anywhere from two to three miles, and sometimes eight to ten miles, and even greater distances, so as to keep out of the way of each other. ”

“ One crossing this country by present-day conveyances, in richly appointed [Pg 94] railroad trains, with all the comforts obtainable in modern sleeping, dining and parlor cars, can hardly be expected to conceive what it was to cover the same course under the conditions described; when there was not even a poor wagon road, and the utmost speed did not equal in a day the distance traveled in half an hour by the present mode. Any person who rides in a cumbrous and heavily laden wagon, behind a team whose pace never exceeds a slow walk ”

“ Every time the big wagon jolted over a stone—and it was jolt over stones all the time—it seemed as if it must topple over the side and roll to the bottom; and then the way the driver talked to the mules to keep them straight, and the creaking and scraping of the wagons, was enough to frighten the most courageous. ”

“ Now for the chase. Get four horses, well shod, and put two to a light wagon, and put in feed and provisions for several days; and get a man to drive. Have two good riding-ponies, and tie one behind the wagon and mount the other. Now start after the herd in a walk, and let the wagon follow just in sight of you. Of course, the first day the mustangs will burn the prairie, and you will not be in sight of them half the time; but just keep on, and never break the walk. The wagon, of course, will not travel nearly as far as you do, for, as the herd circles, the driver can cut across. ”

“ Once more they are stretching their teams along a travelled road—where a half-score of wheeled vehicles must have passed before them. And not long before: the wheel-tracks are of recent impress—the hoof-prints of the animals fresh as if made within the hour. A train of waggons, not unlike their own, must have passed over the burnt prairie! ”

“ A one-horse wagon—for nothing was buggy then, but neglected bedsteads—artistically bilious, and striped like a beetle, with a paneled box high before and behind, like an inverted chapeau, and a seat with a baluster back, softened and graced with a buffalo robe, warm in winter—and in summer also—was one of the wheeled wonders of my boyhood. No sitting in that wagon like a right-angled triangle—room in front for any possible length of leg, and a foot-stove withal—room behind for two or three handfuls of children, and a little hair-trunk with a bit of brass-nail alphabet on the cover. ”

“ When it becomes necessary, with loaded wagons, to cross a stream of this character against the current, I would recommend that the teams be doubled, the leading animals led, a horseman placed on each side with whips to assist the driver, and that, before the first wagon enters the water, a man should be sent in advance to ascertain the best ford. During seasons of high water, men, in traversing the plains, often encounter rivers which rise above a fording stage, and remain in that condition for many days, and to await the falling of the water might involve a great loss of time. ”

“ With a completed wagon road built from the railway, it should be an easy half day's journey of 80 miles by automobile from the railroad to the center of the park, the whole route traversing mountains of wonderful scenic beauty and teeming with big game. ”

“ The road, or rather track, was grass-grown, the wheels sunk into the sward, and moved noiselessly along; there was no echo of the horses’ feet upon the turf, and as if the stillness or nature had effect upon the party, not a word was uttered. Altogether, the vehicles, with their white canvass coverings, the impish foreloupers, the attendant guides, and the riders, who kept close to the two foremost wagons for fear of losing their way, all gliding silently through the shroud-like vapour, might have served as an illustration of one of the scenes in that delicious romance of “Undine.” ”

“ Speed was a matter of little importance, the principal object being to introduce a distinct surface or roadway which would allow a heavier load to be hauled without increasing the hauling power. As a heavily loaded wheelbarrow, difficult to move on an ordinary road, can be readily wheeled along a wooden plank, so it may have been inferred that strong timber, laid in parallel lines and level and even on the upper surface, would form a track, or roadway, presenting far less resistance than the ordinary gravelled or paved roads. ”

“ Every man literally "put his shoulder to the wheel." We were compelled often to take hold of the wheels to boost the wagons over the logs or to ease them down steep places. Our force was divided into three groups,—one man to each wagon to drive; four to act as wheelmen; father and the women, on foot or horseback, to drive the stock. God bless the women folks of the Plains! ”

“ The physical character of the country, which is rolling prairie, makes the road undulatory,—up hill, then down grade, with occasional stretches of level track. Some of the gradients rise to sixty feet to the mile, extending over two miles without sagging a foot. Sound steel rails, well tied, are supported by a graveled road-bed, making an excellent track, and presenting a good opportunity for fast running where high speed is needed. The train is run on card-time, stopping about every twelve miles. ”

“ The trail is just the width of the wagon, and it clings to the mountain side above the brawling waters in Pecos Cañon, now down on a level with the torrent, now high up edging round ramparts of rock sheer as a wall. You load your wagon the heavier on the inner side both going and coming; and you sit with your weight on the inner side; and the driver keeps the brakes pretty well jammed down on sharp in-curves and the horses headed close in to the wall. With care, there is no danger whatever. Lumber teams traverse the road every day. ”

“ The wheelers were always the heavyweights, old and trained, and able to hold back the load or their unruly teammates until the whackers could throw on a brake or "rough lock," the last named a log chain fastened at one end to the wagon, thrown through the wheel spokes in such a way as to be between the ground and the wheel on the "near rear hind wheel" of the lead wagon. ”