Discoveries and Inventions of the Nineteenth Century

the white man thus made for his iron horse a secure and direct road. (Fig. 54.) Fig. 54.—“Cape Horn.” Fig. 55.—Snow Plough. These lines of railway, connecting Omaha with Sacramento, are remarkable evidences of the energy and spirit which characterize the Anglo-Saxon race in America. The men who conceived the design of the Central Pacific Railroad, and actually carried it into effect, were not persons experienced in railway construction; but five middle-aged traders of Sacramento, two of whom where drapers, one a wholesale grocer, and the others ironmongers, believing that such a railway should be made, and finding no one ready to undertake it, united together, projected the railway, got it completed, and now manage it. These gentlemen were associated with an engineer 122named Judah, who was a sanguine advocate of the scheme, and made the preliminary surveys, if he did not plan the line. The line is considered one of the best appointed and best managed in the States; yet the project was at first ridiculed and pronounced impracticable by engineers of high repute, opposed by capitalists, and denounced by politicians. An eminent banker, who personally regarded the scheme with hopefulness, would not venture, however, to take any stock, lest the credit of his bank should be shaken, were he known to be connected with so wild a scheme. And, indeed, the difficulties appeared great. Except wood, all the materials required, the iron rails, the pickaxes and spades, the waggons, the locomotives, and the machinery had to be sent by sea from New York, round Cape Horn, a long and perilous voyage of nine months duration, and transhipped at San Francisco for another voyage of 120 miles before they could reach Sacramento. Add to this that workmen were so scarce in California, and wages so high, that to carry on the work it was necessary to obtain men from New York; and during its progress 10,000 Chinamen were brought across the Pacific, to work as labourers. Subscriptions came in very slowly, and before 30 miles of the line had been constructed, the price of iron rose in a very short time to nearly three times its former amount. At this critical juncture, the five merchants decided to defray, out of their own private fortunes, the cost of keeping 800 men at work on the line for a whole year. We cannot but admire the unswerving confidence in their enterprise displayed by these five country merchants, unskilled in 123railway making, unaided by public support, and even discouraged in their project by their own friends. The financial and legal obstacles they successfully surmounted were not the only difficulties to be overcome. They had the engineering difficulties of carrying their line over the steep Sierra, a work of four years; long tunnels had to be bored; one spring when snow 60 ft. in depth covered the track, it had to be removed by the shovel for 7 miles along the road; saw-mills had to be erected in the mountains, to prepare the sleepers and other timber work; wood and water had to be carried 40 miles across alkali plains, and locomotives and rails dragged over the mountains by teams of oxen. The chief engineer, who organized the force of labourers, laid out the road, designed the necessary structures, and successfully grappled with the novel problem of running trains over such a line in all seasons, was Mr. S. S. Montague. The requirements of the traffic necessitate not only solidly constructed iron-covered snow-sheds, but massive snow-ploughs to throw off the track the deep snow which could in no other way be prevented from interrupting the working of the line. These snow-ploughs are sometimes urged forward with the united power of eight heavy locomotives. Fig. 55 represents one of these ploughs cleaning the line, by throwing off the snow on to the sides of the track. The cutting apparatus varies in its arrangements, some forms being designed to push the snow off on one side, some on the other, and to fling it down the precipices; and others, like the one represented, are intended merely to throw it off the track. Fig. 56.—The first Steam Railroad Train in America. Sacramento is 1,775 miles from Omaha, and is connected with San Francisco by a line 139 miles long. At San Francisco, or rather at Oakland, 1,911 miles from Omaha and 3,212 miles from New York, is the terminus of the great system of lines connecting the opposite shores of the vast North American continent. San Francisco, situated on the western shore of a bay, is connected with Oakland by a ferry; but the railway company have recently constructed a pier, which carries the trains out into the bay for 2¼ miles. This pier is strongly built, and is provided with a double set of rails and a carriage-road, and with slips at which ships land and embark passengers, so that ships trading to China, Japan, and Australia can load and unload directly into the trains, which may pass without change from the shores of the Pacific to those of the Atlantic Ocean. San Francisco is a marvellous example of rapid increase, for the population now numbers 170,000, yet a quarter of a century ago 500 white settlers could not be found in as many miles around its site. The first house was erected in 1846, and in 1847 not a ship visited the bay, but now forty large steamships ply regularly, carrying mails to China, Japan, Panama, South America, Australia, &c., and there are, of course, hundreds of other steamers and ships. 124The descriptions we have given of only two lines of railway may suffice to show that the modern engineer is deterred by no obstacles, but boldly drives his lines through places apparently the most impracticable. He shrinks from no operations however difficult, nor hesitates to undertake works the mere magnitude of which would have made our forefathers stand aghast. Not in England or America alone, but in almost every part of the world, the railways have extended with wonderful rapidity; the continent of Europe is embraced by a network of lines; the distant colonies of Australia and New Zealand have thousands of miles of lines laid down, and many more in progress; the map of India shows that peninsula traversed in all directions by the iron roads; and in the far distant East we hear of Japan having several lines in successful operation, and the design of laying down more. In connection with such works, at home and abroad, many constructions of great size and daring have been designed and erected; many navigable rivers have been bridged, and not seldom has an arm of the sea itself been spanned; hundreds of miles of embankments and viaducts have been raised; hills have been pierced with innumerable cuttings and tunnels, and all these great works have been accomplished within the experience of a single generation of men, and have sprung from one single successful achievement of Stephenson’s—the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, completed and opened in 1830. We in England should also have pride in remembering that the growth of the railways here is due to the enterprise, industry, and energy of private persons; for the State has furnished no funds, but individuals, by combining their own resources, have executed the works, and manage the lines for their common interest and the public good. It is said that the amount of money which has been spent on railways in Great Britain is not far short of 500 millions of pounds sterling. The greatest railway company in the United Kingdom is the London and North-Western, which draws in annual receipts about seven millions of pounds; and the total receipts of all the railway companies would nearly equal half the revenue of the State. Fig. 57.—Railway Embankment near Bath. PLATE VI.MOUNT WASHINGTON INCLINED TRACK. 125 INCLINED RAILWAYS. The construction of railways over lofty ranges of mountains will be found illustrated by the brief notices in other pages of the Union Pacific line in the United States, and of the St. Gothard railway over the Alps. In such cases, the track has been to a great extent carried over the spurs or along the sides of the mountains, so that such inclines might be obtained as the ordinary locomotive was capable of ascending. The expensive operation of tunnelling was resorted to only where sinuous deviations from the more direct route involved a still greater expenditure of initial cost, or a continual waste of time and energy in the actual working of the line. Sometimes winding tracks, almost returning by snake-like loops on their own route, as projected on the map, were required in order that the ascent could be made with an incline practicable for the ordinary locomotive. In the earlier development of railways, there were to be met with cable inclines, where the traction of the locomotive had to be superseded or supplemented by that of a rope or chain wound round a drum actuated by a stationary steam-engine. The more powerful locomotives of the present day are able to mount grades of such inclination that the employment of cable traction is no longer requisite, except in but a few cases. Railways had carried passengers about in all parts of the world for many years before the engineer addressed himself to the problem of easily and quickly taking people up heights of steep and toilsome ascent, sought generally for the sake of the prospect, etc. Such, at least, has been the object of most of the inclined railways already constructed, but to this their utility is by no means limited, and as their safety and stability has been proved by many years of use, they may find wider applications than the gratification of the tourist and pleasure-seeker. The toothed rail or rack which was formerly supposed necessary to obtain power of traction on rails has been already mentioned (p. 101), and as early as 1812 such a contrivance appears to have been in use in England, near Leeds, the invention of a Mr. Blenkinsop. This mode of traction received no development or improvement worthy of notice until Mr. S. Marsh constructed, in 1866, a railway ladder—for so it may be called—for the ascent of Mount Washington in the United States. In this case there was a centre rail formed of iron, angle iron laid between and parallel to the metals on which ran the wheels of the carriages. In this centre rail angle irons were connected by round bars of wrought iron, which the teeth of a pinion of the locomotive engaged, so that a climbing action, resembling somewhat that of a wheel entering on the successive rounds of a ladder, was produced, and in this way an ascensive power was obtained sufficient to overcome gravity, the gradient not much exceeding a rise of one foot in three at any point (12 vertical to 32 horizontal). This railway was completed in 1869, and for more than a quarter of a century it has carried thousands of tourists to the summit of Mount Washington without a single fatal accident. This system of ascending mountains was soon adopted in Europe with certain improvements, for in 1870 an inclined railway was constructed to the summit of the Rigi, in which a system of involute gearing was substituted for the ladder-like rounds of Mr. Marsh. A certain vibratory action, due to the successive engagements of the teeth in the central rack, which was somewhat 126disagreeable for passengers, was soon afterwards obviated in the Abt system, in which two racks are used, with the teeth of one opposite the spaces of the other, and a double pinion provided, so that greater uniformity in the acting power is obtained. With certain modifications in detail, such as horizontal instead of vertical pinions, this system has been largely adopted wherever cables have been dispensed with. In the inclined railway by which Mount Pilatus, near Lucerne, is now ascended, horizontal teeth project from both sides of a centre rail, and these are engaged by horizontal pinions. The incline here is very steep, being in places nearly 30 degrees; teeth perpendicular to the plane of the incline