The American Railway: Its Construction, Development, Management, and Appliances

by Thomas Curtis Clarke

When a line of railway meets in its course a barrier of rock, it is often best to cut directly through. If the grade is not too far below the surface of the rock, the cut is made like a great trench with the sides as steep as the nature of the material will allow. Very deep cuts are, however, not desirable. The rains bring down upon their slopes the softer material from above, and the frost detaches pieces of rock which, falling, may result in serious accidents to trains. Snow lodges in these deep cuts, at times entirely stopping traffic, as in the blizzard near New York, in March, 1888. A tunnel, therefore, while perhaps greater in first cost than a moderately deep cut, is really often the more economical expedient.

Tunnel at the Foot of Mount St. Stephen, on the Canadian Pacific.
(The glacier 8,200 feet above the Railway.)

Peña de Mora
on the La Guayra and Carácas Railway, Venezuela.

And here is as good a place, perhaps, as any other in this chapter, to say that true engineering is the economical adaptation of the means and opportunities existing, to the end desired. Civil engineering was defined, by one of the greatest of England's engineers, as "the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man," and that definition was adopted as a fundamental idea in the charter of the English Institution of Civil Engineers. But the development of engineering works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." And it may be remarked, as to the project which he was then discussing, that after a very large expenditure and an experience of eight years since that discussion, the plans of the work were modified and the identical suggestions made by Mr. Welch of a radical economical change were adopted in 1888.[8] Another eminent American engineer, whose practical experience has been gained in the construction and engineering supervision of more than five thousand miles of railway, said, in his address as President of the American Society of Civil Engineers: "The high object of our profession is to consider and determine the most economic use of time, power, and matter."

Peña de Mora
on the La Guayra and Carácas Railway, Venezuela.

And here is as good a place, perhaps, as any other in this chapter, to say that true engineering is the economical adaptation of the means and opportunities existing, to the end desired. Civil engineering was defined, by one of the greatest of England's engineers, as "the art of directing the great sources of power in nature for the use and convenience of man," and that definition was adopted as a fundamental idea in the charter of the English Institution of Civil Engineers. But the development of engineering-works in America has been effected successfully by American engineers only because they have appreciated another side of the problem presented to them. A past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a man of rare judgment and remarkable executive ability, the late Ashbel Welch, said, in discussing a great undertaking proposed by an eminent Frenchman: "That is the best engineering, not which makes the most splendid, or even the most perfect, work, but that which makes a work that answers the purpose well, at the least cost." And it may be remarked, as to the project which he was then discussing, that after a very large expenditure and an experience of eight years since that discussion, the plans of the work were modified and the identical suggestions made by Mr. Welch of a radical economical change were adopted in 1888.[8] Another eminent American engineer, whose practical experience has been gained in the construction and engineering supervision of more than five thousand miles of railway, said, in his address as President of the American Society of Civil Engineers: "The high object of our profession is to consider and determine the most economic use of time, power, and matter."