The secret of all good road-making, whether railways or common roads, lies in thorough drainage. Until our railways are well drained, it is of little use to try to improve the condition of the track. "In an economical view," says Mr. Colburn, "the damage occasioned by water is far greater than the utmost cost of its removal. The track is disturbed, the iron bruised, the fastenings strained, the chairs broken, the ties rotted, the resistance and thereby the consumption of fuel increased, and the whole wear and tear greatly enhanced."
Next to drainage in importance is plenty of good ballast. The New-England roads are well ballasted, as a general thing; but in the West, where gravel is scarce, they do not trouble themselves to find a substitute. Even the great New York and Erie road, after ten years' use, is only half ballasted, which accounts for its being more than half worn out.
Much has been said and written on the necessity of a good joint for the rails, and many are the inventions for securing this object,—"compound rails," "fished joints," "bracket chairs," "sleeve joints," etc., etc. But without better road-beds no form of superstructure will last, and with road-beds as good as they ought to be almost any simple and easily adjusted arrangement will answer well enough.
But a more important matter than all these, so far as the economy of maintenance is concerned, is the quality and shape of the iron rails, forming one-eighth of the whole cost of our railways. Where companies, instead of buying rails, are selling bonds, they have no right to complain, if the iron turn out as worthless as the debentures. But where they pay cash, they can insist on good iron, and will get it, if they will pay the price, which will rule from eighteen to twenty dollars per ton over that of the poorest article. Nor should the shape and weight of the rail be overlooked. Experience, that stern schoolmaster, has taught us, that, while heavy rails of seventy pounds to the yard, and over, of ordinary iron, go to pieces in three or four years, sixty-pound rails of well-worked and good iron will last more than double that time. The extraordinary durability of the forty-five pound rails made for the Reading Railway Company by the Ebbw Vale Company in 1837 is well known to railway men.
A short calculation will show the superiority, in point of economy, of light and good rails to heavy rails of an inferior quality. A seventy-pound rail requires 110 tons to the mile, costing, at 860 per ton, $6,600. At the end of four years this has to be re-rolled at a cost of $30 per ton, or $3,300 more. This is equal in eight years to an annual depreciation of $1,237 per mile. A sixty-pound rail requires 94 tons to a mile, costing for the best iron that can be rolled $80 per ton, or $7,520 per mile. This would last eight years, and the annual depreciation would be $940 per mile, or $297 less than the other. The 30,000 miles of American railways are thus taxed annually nearly nine millions of dollars for preferring quantity to quality.
In England, it is the custom to retain the best engineering talent upon railways, after as well as during construction. In this country, as soon as the engineer has made out his "final estimate," he is dismissed with as little ceremony as a daylaborer. We employ the best mechanical engineers that we can find to look after the repairs of our engines and cars; while the road, which is more important, and upon the good condition of which we have seen that the success or failure of a railway as a commercial enterprise may depend, is handed over to some ignorant fellow whose only qualifications are industry and obedience.
There are no unmixed evils in this world. The impecuniosity of American railways, besides causing the bad results which we have described, has had a good effect upon the training of American engineers. Being obliged to do a great deal with a little money, they have steered clear of those enormous extravagances which have characterized the works of such engineers as the late Mr. Brunel, colossal less in proportions than cost. It has been well observed, that there was more talent shown on a certain division of the New-York and Erie Railway, in avoiding the necessity for viaducts, than could possibly have been exhibited in constructing them. This remark is a key to the difference between the old English and the American systems of civil engineering. The one is for show, the other for use. We say the old English system, because a better practice has now arisen. Cost is looked to as well as splendor; and there is no engineer now in England whose reputation, would sustain him in constructing such monuments of extravagance as the Great Western Railway or the Britannia Bridge. American civil engineers have not been fairly treated. The wretched construction of many of our railways, and the uneconomical condition of all, have been cast against them by their English brethren as a reproach. But the faults of construction, we have shown, are attributable to another cause. No engineer of standing would lend himself to many of the schemes that have been pushed through in the West. But in order to build a "cheap" road, it is only necessary to get a "cheap" engineer, and that is a commodity easily picked up. If their ignorance and blunders tarnish the fair fame of the profession, it cannot be helped. But if American engineers of standing had been allowed to finish the railways begun by them, and to take care of them and see that they were not abused after they were finished, our railway securities would be quoted at higher rates than they now are.
Although there are many civil engineers of standing and experience who have been thrown out of employment by the general stoppage of public works, and who are better qualified to take care of that costly and delicate machine, a Railway, than men whose knowledge is entirely empirical, yet few railways employ a resident engineer. Those that follow this practice are generally supposed to do so because he is a relative of some Director, and wants a place, and not because such an officer is really required.
"Construction accounts," says Mr. Colburn, "can never be closed, until our roads are built. To attempt it only involves a destruction account of fearful magnitude. Under our present system, we are perpetually rebuilding our roads, not realizing the life of our works, and thereby running capital to waste."
"With good earthwork, thoroughly drained, well-ballasted tracks, rails of good iron, correct form, not exceeding 60 pounds per yard, and properly supported at the joints, the ties properly preserved, and the whole maintained by a judicious system of repairs, the average working expenses might unquestionably be reduced by as much as 18 cents per mile run."