The completion of this undertaking marked the decadence of the foreign engineer in railway-building in Japan. Native engineers were found to be capable of fulfilling the difficult position of assistants, and consequently only a few British engineers were retained in the capacity of advisers or consultants.
Private enterprise also entered the field, and numerous schemes were sanctioned. The first of these was the Nippon Railway Company, organised through the instrumentality of the late Prince Iwakura, a strong advocate of railway expansion, mainly for the purpose of assisting the peers to secure a profitable investment. It took several years of ardent campaigning to enlist the sympathy of the latter in such a project, but at last they fell victims to the Prince’s persuasion, and the Nippon Railway Company was born.
THE MOST STRIKING EXAMPLE OF JAPANESE RAILWAY ENGINEERING
The conquest of the Usui Pass, showing heavy tunnelling and the rack rail in the centre of the track.
This company projected the building of no less than 510 miles of railway. The two greatest contributions to this scheme were the Tokio-Takasaki railway, on which the Government guaranteed a profit of 8 per cent. for ten years, and the Tokio-Sendai section, guaranteed similarly for fifteen years. Numerous other private companies followed, many of which received liberal Government subsidies. But while private initiative was displaying considerable energy, the Government railway enterprise slackened, and threatened to collapse, until Prince Yamagata proposed that trunk lines should be laid along all the main routes of the country, when the movement received a fresh impetus. Thus in 1883 there was renewed national activity in construction, and although many of these undertakings were beset with difficulties of a physical character, they were pushed through to completion.
Copyright, 1911, Kiser Photo Co., for Spokane, Portland & Seattle Railway]
[See [page 310]
TWO RAILWAYS RACING TO THE PACIFIC COAST THROUGH THE DESCHUTES RIVER CANYON