The Railway Conquest of the World

by Frederick Arthur Ambrose Talbot

THE DISMAL TRACT OF SWAMP AND RIVER THROUGH WHICH THE ALASKAN CENTRAL RAILWAY MAKES ITS WAY

One of the most complex difficulties was in regard to the bringing up of provisions and stores for the men, and the requisite material for the railway. The base of supplies was over 1000 miles away, every ounce of necessities having to be brought up by water from Seattle or Vancouver. The little army was cut off entirely from the outside world, news of which could be gleaned only when a boat called at Skaguay. The absence of telegraphic communication was a deficiency which was felt the most sorely. The post, intermittent and uncertain, as there was no regular service, was the sole vehicle of communication. Consequently extreme care had to be observed to preserve a continuous stream of the material required. The omission of this or that entailed a delay of anything from ten days upwards.

At one point a lofty granite tooth 70 feet wide and 20 feet thick sheered up in front of the engineer to a height of 120 feet. He neither attempted to go round nor through the obstacle. He brought up a squad of expert drillers, and soon they were engaged in honeycombing the base of the cliff with deep holes. Charges of explosives were rammed home, and when detonated the whole crag, a crumbling mass of rock, rattled down into the ravine. The pedestal of this cliff was then smoothed off, and thereon the sleepers and metals were laid.

By dint of prodigious effort, continued without intermission both day and night the whole week through, without even a respite for Sundays, the engineer succeeded in carrying the railway forward for a distance of 40 miles and over the summit of the pass in a single season. Such an achievement in the face of the abnormal difficulties encountered, in such a short space of time, was indeed memorable.

Satisfied with this result, the engineer called a halt. His men were in dire need of rest, and as there was no object in exposing them unduly to the rigours of the terrible winter now that the back of the task had been broken, constructional work was suspended for a few months. But it was not a period of complete inactivity. He had planned his work for the following summer, and during the winter months he pressed the snow-covered country into service for the erection of his constructional camps, the disposition of building material, provisions and stores at convenient points over a long distance ahead.

One cannot help admiring the perspicacity of the man identified with this peculiar enterprise. When he sought financial assistance to further his scheme he argued that directly the railway had negotiated the summit, remunerative traffic would develop. So it proved. Confident in these anticipations, the guiding hand had ordered considerable rolling-stock to be hurried to Skaguay while his graders were forcing their way to the summit, and when the pass was overcome a service was inaugurated.

Yet it is doubtful if the engineer scarcely expected the results that were experienced. The adequacy of his rolling-stock over the first 40 miles was tested to breaking point. The pack-trail over the pass was abandoned as quickly as a candle is extinguished by a gust of wind when the first train was announced. The miners braved the elements, pitiless cold and dazzling snow, no longer. From the railway to-day one can still see decaying evidences of a bygone bustle and activity attending the trek of the first prospectors and pioneers to the Klondike in the falling shacks and huts scattered along the trail, which before the advent of the iron horse were centres of life and revelry, but which to-day are wrapped in forlorn desolation. Scarcely a person enters or even passes their doors now.

So soon as the winter broke, the engineer brought his forces to the front once more. The line skirts Lake Bennett. White Horse, on the head waters of the Yukon, some 72 miles ahead, was the objective, and the engineer was determined to reach that inland terminus that season by hook or by crook. As the line skirts Lake Bennett, and this sheet of water is navigable, he decided to use it temporarily until White Horse was reached, the railway consequently being resumed from the head of the lake. This was a justifiable course, inasmuch as the building of the line along the waterside would have occupied considerable time owing to physical characteristics, while it was imperative that White Horse should be reached without delay.

The coming of spring saw the graders regirding themselves for another wrestle with the rock and gravel. Before they had gone very far the edge of a lake was gained. Its banks were precipitous and did not lend themselves to a feasible track. An ingenious solution of the problem was essayed. The engineer decided to lower the level of this sheet of water by some 14 feet and to build his grade on a shelf which surveys showed there would be exposed. To this end he cut a small outlet. But as the vent was driven through soft soil and totally inadequate to resist the pent-up force of the escaping water, the latter widened the breach into such a deep and wide channel that the lake was lowered by no less than 70 feet! This result opened up a new difficulty, escape from which was only practicable by the erection of two large bridges spanning the rift left by the receding waters. As a result, the line does not run round the lake as planned originally, but cuts directly across its bed.