Opening the iron trail

The rousing chant rang gaily upon the thin air of Western spring. Sitting Jenny, the old yellow mule, for a moment’s breather while the load of rails was being swept from his flat-car truck, Terry Richards had to smile.

Nobody knew who invented that song. Some said Paddy Miles, the track-laying boss—and it did sound like Pat. At any rate, the lines had made a hit, until already their words were echoing from the Omaha yards, the beginning of track, past end o’ track and on through the grading-camps clear to the mountains where the surveying parties were spying out the trail, for this new Union Pacific Railroad across continent.

Time, early in May, 1867. Place, end o’ track, on the Great Plains just north of the Platte River, between North Platte Station of west central Nebraska and Julesburg, the old Overland Stage Station, of northeastern Colorado. Scene, track-laying—a bevy of sweaty, flannel-shirted, cowhide-booted men working like beavers, but with spades, picks, sledges, wrenches and hands, while far before were the graders, keeping ahead, and behind were the boarding-train and the construction-train, puffing back and forth.

Aye, this was a bustling scene, here where a few weeks ago there had been open country traveled by only the emigrant wagons, the stages and the Indians.

And yonder, farther than the graders and out of sight in the northwest, there were still more workers on the big job: the location surveyors, the path-finding surveyors, the—but Terry’s breather was cut short.

“All right!” yelped the command, from the front.

Terry’s empty truck was tipped sideways from the single track. A second little flat-car, hauled by a galloping white horse ridden by small red-headed Jimmie Muldoon, passed full speed, bound to the fray with more rails. Terry’s own car was tipped back upon the track again, one-legged Dennis, its “conductor,” hopped aboard, to the brakes, and uttering a whoop Terry started, to get another load, himself.

Old Jenny headed down track, by the path that she had worn; the fifty feet of rope tautened; with the truck rumbling after and Shep, Terry’s shaggy black dog, romping alongside, they tore for the fresh supplies. Sitting bareback, Terry rode like an Indian.

At the waiting pile of rails dumped from the construction-train he swerved Jenny out, and halted. The light flat-car rolled on until Dennis (who had been crippled in the war) stopped it with the brake. Instantly the rail-slingers there began to load it. And presently Terry was launched once more for end o’ track, with his cargo of forty rails to be placed, lightning quick, upon the ties.

Jimmie’s emptied truck was tipped aside, to give clearance. Then Jimmie pelted rearward, for iron ammunition, and Terry had another breather.

That was a great system by which at the rate of a mile and a half to two miles and a half and sometimes three miles a day the rails for the Iron Horse were being laid to the land of the setting sun.

Beyond end o’ track the graded roadbed stretched straight into the west as far as eye could see, with a graders’ camp of sodded dug-outs and dingy tents breaking the distance. At the tapering-off place the ploughs and scrapers were busy, building the roadbed. Next there came the shovel and pick squads, leveling the roadbed. Next, between end o’ track and shovel squads, there were the tie-layers—seizing the ties from the piles, throwing them upon the roadbed, tamping them and straightening them and constantly asking for more, while six-horse and six-mule wagons toiled up and down, hauling all kinds of material to the “front.”

Already the row of ties laid yesterday and this very morning extended like a rippling stream for three miles, inviting the rails.

At end o’ track itself there were the track-builders—the rail-layers, the gaugers, the spikers, the bolters, the ballasters. And upon the new track there were the boarding-train and the construction-train.

The boarding-train, for the track-gang, held the advance. It was a long train of box-cars fitted up with bunks and dining tables and kitchen—with hammocks slung underneath to the cross-rods and beds made up on top, for the over-flow; and with one car used as an office by General “Jack” Casement and his brother, Dan Casement, who were building the road for the U. P.

The construction-train of flat-cars and caboose plied back and forth between end o’ track and the last supply depot, twenty miles back. These supply depots, linked by construction-trains, were located every twenty miles, on the plains beside the track, back to North Platte, the supply base.

From its depot the train for end o’ track brought up rails, ties, spikes, fish-plate joints—everything. It backed in until its caboose almost touched the rear car of the boarding-train. Overboard went the loads from the flat-cars; with a shrill whistle, away for another outfit of track stuff puffed the construction-train; with answering whistle the boarding-train (Terry’s father at the throttle) followed, a short distance, to clear the path for the rail-trucks.

The rail-truck, Terry’s or Jimmie Muldoon’s, according to whose turn, loaded at the farthest pile. Then up track it scampered, to the very end, where two lines of track-layers, five on a side, were waiting. Each squad grabbed a rail, man after man, and hustled it forward at a run; dropped it so skillfully that the rear end fell into the last fish-plate. They forced the end down, and held the rail straight.

“Down!” signaled the squad bosses. The gaugers had measured the width between the pair of rails: four feet eight and one-half inches. The spikers and bolters sprang with spikes and bolts and sledges. “Whang! Whang! Whangity-whang!” pealed the sledges—a rhythmic chorus. By the time that the first spikes had been driven two more rails were in position. Now and again the little car was shoved forward a few yards, on the new track, to keep up with the work.

A pair of rails were laid—“Down! Down!”—every thirty seconds! Two hundred pairs of rails were reckoned to the mile; there were ten spikes to each rail, three sledge blows to each spike. A pair of rails were laid and spiked fast every minute, which meant a mile of track in three hours and a third—or say three and a half. In fifteen minutes the fish-plate joints had been bolted and everything made taut.

It was a clock-work job, at top speed, with maybe 1,000 miles yet to go in this race to beat the Central Pacific.

The Central Pacific was the road being built eastward from Sacramento of California. The Government had ordered the Union Pacific to meet it and join end o’ track with it, somewhere west of the Rocky Mountains. That would make a railroad clear across continent between the Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean!

The Union Pacific had much the longer trail: 1,000 miles across the plains and the Rockies and as much farther as it could get. The Central Pacific had started in to build only about 150 miles, and then as much farther as it could get, east from the California border.

The C. P. had commenced first. By the time the U. P. had built eleven miles of track, the C. P. had completed over fifty. But while the Central was completing 100 miles, the Union Pacific had completed 300.

Now the Central was still fighting the snowy Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California, and the U. P. had open going on the plains. The C. P. had plenty of timber for ties and culverts and bridges, and plenty of cheap Chinese labor; the U. P. had no timber, all its ties were cut up and down the Missouri River or as far east as Wisconsin, and hauled to end o’ track from Omaha, and by the time that they were laid they cost two dollars apiece. Its workmen were mainly Irish, gathered from everywhere and pretty hard to manage.

The C. P. began at Sacramento on the Sacramento River, up from San Francisco, but its rails and locomotives had to be shipped clear around Cape Horn, from the Pennsylvania factories—or else across the Isthmus of Panama. The U. P. began at Omaha, on the Missouri River, but Omaha was 100 miles from any eastern railroad and all the iron and other supplies had to be shipped by steamboat up from St. Louis or by wagon from central Iowa.

It was nip and tuck. Just the same, General G. M. Dodge, the Union Pacific chief engineer (and a mighty fine man), was bound to reach Salt Lake of Utah first, where big business from the Mormons only waited for a railroad. This year he had set out to build 288 more miles of track between April 1 and November 1. That would take the U. P. to the Black Hills of the Rocky Mountains. The C. P. had still forty miles to go, before it was out of its mountains and down into the Nevada desert; and this looked like a year’s work, also.

Then the U. P. would be tackling the mountains, while the C. P. had the desert, with Salt Lake as the prize for both.

But 288 miles, this year, against the Central’s forty! Phew! No matter. General Dodge was the man to do it, and the U. P. gangs believed that they could beat the C. P. gangs to a frazzle.

“B’ gorry, ’tis the Paddies ag’in the Chinks, it is?” growled Pat Miles, the track-laying boss. “Ould Ireland foriver! Shall the like of us let a lot o’ pig-tailed, rice-’atin’ haythen wid shovels an’ picks hoist the yaller above the grane? Niver! Not whilst we have a man who can spit on his hands. Away yonder on that desert over ferninst Californy won’t there be a shindig, though, when the shillaly meets the chop-stick! For ’tis not at Salt Lake we’ll stop; we’ll kape right on into Nevady, glory be!”

So——

And—“Down! Down!” “Whang! Whang! Whangity-whang!”

The track-laying and the grading gangs were red-shirted, blue-shirted, gray-shirted; with trousers tucked into heavy boots—and many of the trousers were the army blue. For though the men were mainly Irish, they were Americans and two-thirds had fought in the Union armies during the Civil War. Some also had fought in the Confederate armies.

There were ex-sergeants, ex-corporals, and ex-privates by the scores, working shoulder to shoulder. In fact, the whole U. P. corps was like an army corps. Chief Engineer Dodge had been a major-general in the East and on the Plains; Chief Contractor “Jack” Casement had been brigadier general; about all the way-up men had been generals, colonels, majors, what-not; while the workers under them were ready at a moment to drop picks and shovels and sledges and transits, and grabbing guns “fall in” as regular soldiers.

This meant a great deal, when the Indians were fighting the road. This past winter the engineers doing advance survey work had been told by Chief Red Cloud of the Sioux that they must get out and stay out of the country—but there they were there again. Nobody could bluff those surveyors: fellows like “Major” Marshall Hurd who had served as a private of engineers through the war, and Tom Bates, and young Percy Browne, and their parties.

All the survey parties—some of them 500 miles in the lead—moved and worked, carrying guns; the graders’ camps were little forts; the track-builders marched to their jobs, and stacked their rifles while they plied their tools. At night the guns were arranged in racks in the boarding-cars, to be handy. The construction-trains’ cabooses were padded with sand between double walls, and loop-holed, and even the passenger trains were supplied with rifles and revolvers, in cars and cabs. General Dodge called his private car, in which he shuttled up and down the line, his “traveling arsenal.”

This was the arrangement, from the end o’ track back to beginning, 360 miles, and on ahead to the last survey camp. The Central Pacific was not having such trouble.

“An’ lucky for it, too,” as said Paddy Miles. “For betwixt the yaller an’ the red, sure I’d bet on the red. Wan Injun could lick all the Chinymen on this side the Paycific. But there’s niver an Injun who can lick an Irishman, b’ gosh!”

However, today everything seemed peaceful. Usually a detachment of soldiers, or a company of the Pawnee Indian scouts under Major Frank M. North, their white-scout commander, were camped near by, guarding the track-laying. But the soldiers were elsewhere, on a short cross-country trip, and the Pawnees (Company A) were up at Fort Sedgwick, near old Julesburg, fifteen or twenty miles west.

The air was very clear. The graders working on the roadbed five miles away might be seen. The long trains of huge wagons, hauling supplies, wended slowly out to refit them. On this section there were 100 teams and 2,000 men, scattered along; on the next section there were another thousand men, doing the first grading according to the stakes set by the engineers. And eastward there were the trains and the stations, all manned, and other gangs fixing the rough places in the track.

Of all this Terry felt himself to be rather a small part—just riding old Jenny back and forth, with the little rail-truck, while his father imitated with the engine of the boarding-train. Of course, his father had a bad knee (which the war had made worse), and driving an engine was important; but he himself envied his chum, George Stanton. George was out with his father on railroad survey under Mr. Tom Bates—probably fighting Injuns and shooting buffalo and bear, too. That also was man’s work, while riding an old yellow mule over the track was boy’s work.

Every truck-load of forty rails carried the track forward about 560 feet. To that steady “Down! Down!” and “Whangity-whang!” end o’ track reached out farther and farther from the piles of iron thrown off by the construction-train, and from the boarding-train that waited for the construction-train to back in with another supply.

So while cleaning up the piles, Terry and little Jimmie Muldoon had to travel farther and farther with their loads. Then in due time the construction-train would come puffing up, the boarding-train, with Terry’s father leaning from the cab, would move on as close to end o’ track as it dared, the construction-train would follow and with a great noise dump its cargo of jangling iron, and retreat again; the boarding-train would back out, to clear the track for the trucks; and Terry and Jimmie would start in on short hauls, for a spell.

The supply of iron at the last dump was almost exhausted. The construction-train was hurrying in, with more. Engine Driver Ralph Richards and his stoker, Bill Sweeny, were climbing lazily into the cab of old No. 119, ready to pull on up as soon as Jimmie Muldoon’s truck left with the final load. Terry had his eye upon the track, to see it emptied——

Hark! A sudden spatter of shots sounded—a series of shouts and whoops—the whistle of the boarding-train was wide open—up the grade the graders were diving to cover like frightened prairie-dogs—and out from the sandhills not a quarter of a mile to the right there boiled a bevy of wild horsemen, charging full tilt to join with another bevy who tore down diagonally past the graders themselves.

Sioux? Or Cheyennes? The war had begun, for 1867!