The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858
Various

Various

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 13, November, 1858 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

RAILWAY-ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES.[1 - Handbook of Railroad Construction, for the Use of American Engineers. By GEORGE L. VOSE, Civil Engineer. Boston and Cambridge: James Munroe & Company. 1857.Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Reports, from 1830 to 1850. BENJAMIN H. LATROBE, Chief Engineer.Railways and their Management, being a Pamphlet written by JAMES M. WHITON, ESQ., late of the Boston, Concord, and Montreal Railroad. 1856.Report of the President, Treasurer, and General Superintendent of the New York and Erie Railroad Company to the Stockholders. March, 1856.Final Report of JOHN A. ROEBLING, Civil Engineer on the Niagara Railway Suspension-Bridge, May, 1855.]

Though our country can boast of no Watt, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie, Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, or Fairbairn, and lacks such experimenters as Tredgold, Barlow, Hodgkinson, and Clark, yet we have our Evans and Fulton, our Whistler, Latrobe, Roebling, Haupt, Ellet, Adams, and Morris,—engineers who yield to none in professional skill, and whose work will bear comparison with the best of that of Great Britain or the Continent; and if America does not show a Thames Tunnel, a Conway or Menai Tubular Bridge, or a monster steamer, yet she has a railroad-bridge of eight hundred feet clear span, hung two hundred and fifty feet above one of the wildest rivers in the world,—locomotive engines climbing the Alleghanies at an ascent of five hundred feet per mile,—and twenty-five thousand miles of railroad, employing upwards of five thousand locomotives and eighty thousand cars, costing over a thousand millions of dollars, and transporting annually one hundred and thirty millions of passengers and thirty million tons of freight,—and all this in a manner peculiarly adapted to our country, both financially and mechanically.

In England the amount of money bears a high proportion to the amount of territory; in America the reverse is the case; and the engineers of the two countries quickly recognized the fact: for we find our railroads costing from thirty thousand to forty thousand dollars per mile,—while in England, to surmount much easier natural obstacles, the cost varies from seventy-five to one hundred thousand dollars per mile.

The cost of railroad transport will probably never be so low as carriage by water,—that is, natural water-communication; because the river or ocean is given to man complete and ready for use, needing no repairs, and with no interest to pay upon construction capital. Indeed, it is just beginning to be seen all over the country that the public have both expected and received too much accommodation from the companies. Men are perfectly willing to pay five dollars for riding a hundred miles in a stage-coach; but give them a nicely warmed, ventilated, cushioned, and furnished car, and carry them four or five times faster, with double the comfort, and they expect to pay only half-price,—as a friend of the writer once remarked, "Why, of course we ought not to pay so much when we a'n't half so long going,"—as if, when they paid their fare, they not only bargained for transport from one place to another, but for the luxury of sitting in a crowded coach a certain number of hours. It would be hard to show a satisfactory basis for such an establishment of tolls. We need not wonder at the unprofitableness of many of our roads when we consider that the relative cost of transport is,—

By Stage, one cent,
By Railroad, two and seven-twelfths;

and the relative charge,—

By Stage, five cents,
By Railroad, three cents;

and the comparative profit, as five less one to three less two and seven-twelfths, or as four to five-twelfths, or as nine and six-tenths to one.

America has, it is true, a grander system of natural water-communication than any other land except Brazil; but, for all that, there is really but a small part of the area, either of the Alleghany coal and iron fields, or of the granaries of the Mississippi valley, reached even by our matchless rivers. A certain strip or band of country, bordering the water-courses, is served by them both as regards export and import; just as much is served wherever we build a railroad. In fact, whenever we lay a road across a State, whether it connects the West directly with the East, or only with some central commercial point in the West, just so often do we open to market a band of country as long as the road, and thirty, forty, or fifty miles wide,—the width depending very much upon the cost of transport over such road; and as the charge is much less upon a railroad than upon a common road, the distance from the road from which produce may be brought is much greater with the former than with the latter. The actual determination of the width of the band is a simple problem, when the commercial nature of the country is known.

The people of the great valley have not been slow, where Nature has denied them the natural, to make for themselves artificial rivers of iron. These railroads are more completely adapted to the physical character of the Western States than would be any other mode of communication. The work of construction is oftentimes very light, little more being necessary for a railway across the prairies of the West (generally) than a couple of ditches twenty or thirty feet apart, the material taken therefrom being thrown into the intermediate space, thus forming the surface which supports the crossties, the sills or sleepers, and the rails. Indeed, the double operation of ditching and embanking is in some cases performed by a single machine, (a nondescript affair, in appearance half-way between a threshing-machine and a hundred-and-twenty-pound field-piece,) drawn by six, eight, or ten pairs of oxen.

It is even probable that in a great many cases the common road would cost more than the railway in the great central basin of America; as the rich alluvial soil, when wet in spring or fall, is almost impassable, and lack of stone and timber prevents the construction of artificial roads.

The influence of the railroad upon the Western farm-lands is quickly seen by the following figures, extracted from a lately published work on railroad construction.

Table showing the Effect of Railroad Transport upon the Value of Grain in the Market of Chicago, Illinois.

WHEAT CORN

Carried by Carried by Carried by Carried by

railroad wagon railroad wagon

At market $49.50 49.50 25.60 25.60

Carried 10 m. 49.25 48.00 24.25 23.26

do. 50 m. 48.75 42.00 24.00 17.25

do. 100 m. 48.00 34.50 23.25 9.75

do. 150 m. 47.25 27.00 22.50 2.25

do. 200 m. 46.50 19.50 21.75 0.00

do. 300 m. 45.00 4.50 20.25 0.00

do. 330 m. 44.55 0.00 19.80 0.00

Thus a ton of corn carried two hundred miles costs by wagon transport more than it brings at market,—while, moved by railroad, it is worth $21.75. Also wheat will not bear wagon transport of 330 miles,—while, moved that distance by railroad it is worth $44.55 per ton.

The social effect of railroads is seen and felt by those who live in the neighborhood of large cities. The unhealthy density of population is prevented, by enabling men to live five, ten, or fifteen miles away from the city and yet do business therein. The extent of this diffusion is as the square of the speed of transport. To illustrate. If a person walks four miles an hour, and is allowed one hour for passing from his home to his place of business, he can live four miles from his work; the area, therefore, which may be lived in is the circle of which the radius is four miles, the diameter eight miles, and the area 501/4 square miles. If by horse he can go eight miles an hour, the diameter of the circle becomes sixteen miles, and the area 201 square miles. Finally, if by railroad he goes thirty miles an hour, the diameter becomes sixty miles, and the area 2,827 square miles.

In the case of railroads, as of other labor-saving (and labor-producing) contrivances, the innovation has been loudly decried; but though it does render some classes of labor useless, and throw out of employment some persons, it creates new labor for more than the old, and gives much more than it takes away.

Twenty years of experience show that the diminished cost of transport by railroad invariably augments the amount of commerce transacted, and in a much larger ratio than the reduction of cost. It is estimated by Dr. Lardner that three hundred thousand horses, working daily in stages, would be required to perform the passenger-traffic alone which took place in England during the year 1848.

Regarding the safety of railroad-travelling, though the papers teem with awful calamities from collisions and other causes, yet so great is the number of persons who use the new mode of transport, that travelling by railroad is really about one hundred times safer than by stage. The mortality upon English roads was for one year observed: —one person killed for each sixty-five million transported; in America, for the same time, one in forty-one million.

If we should try to reason from the rate of past railway-growth as to what the future is to be, we should soon be lost in figures. Thus, in the United States,—

In 1829 there were 3 miles.

In 1830 41 miles.

In 1840 2167 miles.

In 1850 7355 miles.

In 1856 23,242 miles.

Thus from 1830 to 1840, the rate is as 2167/41 or 53 nearly; from 1840 to 1850, 7355/2167, or 3 nearly; and from 1850 to 1856, 23242/ 7355 or 3 nearly; and from 1850 to 1860 we may suppose the rate will be about 4. The rate is probably now at its permanent maximum, taking the whole country together,—the increase in New England having nearly ceased, while west of the Mississippi it has not reached its average.

Among the larger and more important roads and connected systems in our country may be named the New York and Erie Railroad,—connecting the city of New York with Lake Erie at Dunkirk, (and, by the road's diverging from its western terminus, with "all places West and South," as the bills say,)—crossing the Shawangunk Mountains through the valley of the Neversink, up the Delaware, down the Susquehanna, and through the rich West of the Empire State.

The Pennsylvania Central Road: from Philadelphia through Lancaster to Harrisburg, on the Susquehanna, up the Juniata and down the western slope of the Alleghanies, through rock-cut galleries and over numberless bridges, reaching at last the bluffs where smoky Pittsburg sees the Ohio start on its noble course.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad: from Baltimore, in Maryland, to Wheeling and Parkersburg, on the Ohio;—crossing the lowlands to the Washington Junction, thence up the Patapsco, down the Monocacy, to the Potomac; up to Harper's Ferry, where the Potomac and the Shenandoah chafe the rocky base of the romantic little town perched high above; winding up the North Branch to Cumberland,—the terminus of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, and of the great national turnpike to the West, for which Wills' Creek opened so grand a gate at the narrows,—to Piedmont the foot and Altamont the summit, through Savage Valley and Crabtree Gorge, across the glades, from which the water flows east to the Chesapeake Bay and west to the Gulf of Mexico; down Saltlick Creek, and up the slopes of Cheat River and Laurel Hill, till rivers dwindle to creeks, creeks to rills, and rills lose themselves on the flanks of mountains which bar the passage of everything except the railroad; thence, through tunnels of rock and tunnels of iron, descending Tygart's Valley to the Monongahela, and thence through a varied but less rugged country to Moundsville, twelve miles below Wheeling, on the Ohio River.

These are our three great roads where engineering skill has triumphed over natural obstacles. We have another class of great lines to which the obstacles were not so much mechanical as financial, —the physical difficulties being quite secondary. Such are the trunk lines from the East to the West,—through Buffalo, Erie, and Cleveland, to Toledo and Detroit, and from Detroit to Chicago, Rock Island, Burlington, Quincy, and St. Louis; from Pittsburg, Wheeling, and Parkersburg, on the Ohio, to Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Louisville, and St. Louis; and from Cleveland, through Columbus, to Cincinnati, and from Cincinnati to the Northwest.

In progress also may be noticed roads running west from St. Louis, Hannibal, and Burlington, on the Mississippi, all tending towards some point in Kansas, from which the great Pacific Road, the crowning effort of American railway-engineering, may be supposed to take its departure for California and Oregon.

The chief point of difference between the English and the American engineer is, that the former defies all opposition from river and mountain, maintains his line straight and level, fights Nature at every point, cares neither for height nor depth, rock nor torrent, builds his matchless roads through the snowy woods of Canada or over the sandy plains of Egypt with as much unconcern as among the pleasant fields of Hertford or Surrey, and spans with equal ease the Thames, the Severn, the St. Lawrence, and the Nile. The words "fail," "impossible," "can't be done," he knows not; and when all other means of finding a firm base whereon to build his bridges and viaducts fail, he puts in a foundation of golden guineas and silver dollars, which always gives success.

On the other hand, the American engineer, always respectful (though none the less determined) in the presence of natural obstacles to his progress, bows politely to the opposing mountain-range, and, bowing, passes around the base, saying, as he looks back, "You see, friend, we need have no hard feelings,—the world is large enough for thee and me." To the broad-sweeping river he gently hints, "Nearer your source you are not so big, and, as I turned out for the mountain, why should I not for the river?" till mountain and river, alike aghast at the bold pigmy, look in silent wonder at the thundering train which shoulders aside granite hills and tramples rivers beneath its feet. But if Nature corners him between rocks heavenward piled on the one hand and roaring torrents on the other, whether to pass is required a bridge or a tunnel, we find either or both designed and built in a manner which cannot be bettered. He is well aware that the directors like rather to see short columns of figures on their treasurer's books than to read records of great mechanical triumphs in their engineer's reports.

Of the whole expense of building a railroad, where the country is to any considerable degree broken, the reduction of the natural surface to the required form for the road, that is, the earthwork, or, otherwise, the excavation and embankment, amounts to from thirty to seventy per cent. of the whole cost. Here, then, is certainly an important element on which the engineer is to show his ability; let us look a little at it, even at the risk of being dry.

It is by no means necessary to reduce the natural surface of the country to a level or horizontal line; if it were so, there would be an end to all railroads, except on some of the Western prairies. This was not, however, at first known; indeed, those who were second to understand the matter denied the possibility of moving a locomotive even on a level by applying power to the wheels, because, it was said, the wheels would slip round on the smooth iron rail and the engine remain at rest. But lo! when the experiment was tried, it was found that the wheel not only had sufficient bite or adhesion upon the rail to prevent slipping and give a forward motion to the engine, but that a number of cars might be attached and also moved.

This point gained, the objectors advanced a step, but again came to a stand, and said, "If you can move a train on a level, that is all, —you can't go up hill." But trial proved that easy inclines (called grades) could be surmounted,—say, rising ten feet for each mile in length.