It was a thrilling story. The Central Pacific people had started in 7,000 feet up, at the top of the Sierra Nevada Range. They had had to haul their rails and other supplies over snowy grades of ninety and 100 feet to the mile—one grade was the limit of 116 feet to the mile! It took two of the most powerful engines yet built, to each construction-train; the snow was fifteen feet deep on the level, and half of the graders had to spend their time shoveling it off the roadbed. The track could not get over the top, on account of the grade, and the snow there twenty to 100 feet deep, so it went through, by a tunnel a third of a mile long, drilled into solid granite rock, and blasted out with powder. Some of the charges blew 3,000 tons of rock into fragments at one whack—and rocks weighing over 200 pounds were sent flying over half a mile. The powder expense for one month was $54,000.
The company could not wait to get their engines and rails by ship around Cape Horn, so they were ordering them by the railroad across the Isthmus of Panama—a shortcut. The freight bill on one locomotive was $8,100; and two of the giant engines had cost the company, when delivered, $70,752!
Forty miles of snow-sheds, of heavy timber, were necessary, so that the road should not be snowed under completely. There was to be one snow-shed over twenty miles long! There was a tremendous amount of high trestles, as well as a tremendous amount of chiseling and blasting to make a roadbed in the faces of the precipices.
Twenty-five saw-mills were busy, turning out timbers and ties. Ten thousand Chinamen had been engaged, as graders and track-layers. They were paid $30 a month—or a dollar a day, including Sundays—and furnished their own meals. They worked so close and with such system that in a space of 250 feet there sometimes were thirty carts and 250 graders, all as busy as bees. White men could not be depended upon; the white laborers were always being tempted away, to the gold and silver mines.
The Central Pacific Company had not waited to finish the big tunnel, or shovel off the snow. They had sent several thousand men on ahead, in wagons, twenty miles over and down, to work where the snow was lighter. They had loaded a locomotive, taken apart, and forty miles of rails and bolts and spikes, upon wagons, and sent them over, too.
So that while the tunnel was being drilled and blasted, and the grading done beyond, the advance gangs were building, also. On December 13 the tracks had descended the mountain as far as the Nevada line; were getting down into the foothills, and early in the spring would be amidst the sage-brush of the Nevada desert, with an open way to Salt Lake!
“Gee! We fellows’ll have to hustle,” George remarked, after he and Terry had succeeded in reading the tattered newspapers, passed around at Cheyenne. “They’ve got 600 miles yet to go, but it’s level; we’ve got 500 miles, and we’re just starting in on the mountains.”
“That Nevada desert country is fierce, though. No good water for miles and miles, and lots of loose sand and soda and alkali. Injuns, too—the Diggers and Snakes. Our engineers have been across it surveying.”
“Can’t be worse than our Red Desert,” retorted George—who had been there, himself. “And we’ve got the Wasatch Mountains, besides.”
“Just the samee, I’ll bet on the Irish. We’ll beat the Chinks into Salt Lake, and we’ll meet ’em while they’re still coming,” Terry answered hopefully. “You watch our smoke, boy, as soon as spring opens. The Northwestern Railway is into Council Bluffs across from Omaha, you know; we don’t have to haul our stuff by wagon and boat any more—we get the rails quick, right off the cars. We’ve got plenty timber close to the line, in the Black Hills, for ties, and the tie-camps are cutting and sawing now. We’re graded already clear ahead to Sanders on the other side of the Black Hills, and the surveys are about finished from here to Salt Lake. Do you know how many miles those engineers have covered since April? Three thousand, three hundred and ten! I reckon General Dodge has everything mapped, and sees just what he’s going to do.”