Although the first trans-continental railway across the North American continent tapped San Francisco, this was not the route that was advocated in the first instance. Public fancy was inclined rather to the suggestion that the Pacific should be gained more to the north, at the estuary of the Columbia River. This feeling was fostered, no doubt, because that country loomed more prominently in the popular eye, as a result of the famous expedition of Lewis and Clark during the years 1804–6, wherein they trailed across the unknown corner of the continent and gained the Pacific via the Columbia River. The operations of the Hudson Bay Trading Company and its numerous rivals also had served to familiarise the public with this great territory.

It is strange to observe how, directly Stephenson had demonstrated the possibilities of the steam locomotive, imaginative minds drew pictures of stupendous railway-building achievements across great continents, broken up by unscaled mountains and unfathomed broad rivers, as if the building of a track for the iron horse was the same as a child building toy houses with wooden bricks. As a result the North American continent became criss-crossed in all directions by railways—on paper—and it was a good thing for the country at the time that these schemes never got any farther than that stage.

Since Huntington succeeded in his first great effort, the country has been spanned by a round dozen lines. Four systems, however, stand out pre-eminently. These are the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern, two lines which, in the first instance, were built after the pioneer manner, and the Western Pacific, and the Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Puget Sound roads respectively, which were constructed upon experience gained in connection with the earlier lines, and therefore in accordance with modern ideas.

The Northern Pacific undertaking suffered strange vicissitudes. It was suggested, discussed and anticipated for years before it was ever taken in hand. It was a born engineer and practical railway-builder who drove the scheme finally to a definite conclusion. This was Edwin F. Johnson, and his words carried weight because of his great engineering reputation and the soundness of his views. He waged the agitation so relentlessly that the Government at last embarked upon a unique enterprise. A series of expeditions were inaugurated, known as the Pacific Railway Surveys, and the men for this task were drawn from every department of the public service. Their task was to report upon the practicability of threading the great mountain barriers to reach the western sea. The results of their efforts were set out in some thirteen large volumes, and they constitute possibly the most exhaustive work ever carried out in regard to the plotting of railways through a country. But, like the majority of such Government outbursts, they represent so much wasted money: they were so valuable that they became forgotten. The surveyors and railway-builders of to-day prefer to work out their own destinies.

Then came the Civil War, and that ruled any railway-building enterprise under the ægis of the Government completely out of court. But Johnson was not to be dissuaded from his enterprise. He laid his scheme before many prominent railway men in the country, and they decided to carry out the work. Johnson was deputed to act as chief engineer, and was urged to locate the line.

In 1870 the task of laying some 2,500 miles of track was commenced. The mouth of the Columbia River was selected as the outlet on the Pacific Ocean. Work was commenced simultaneously from both ends, the eastern terminal being near Lake Superior. By 1873 the line had reached the Missouri River on the east, and here a pause had to be called to erect a massive steel bridge, 1,400 feet long, 50 feet above the river, which absorbed £200,000, or $1,000,000.

When the first stretch of prairie line was completed, it was used only in the summer months. There was not enough traffic to pay for the coal burned in the locomotives during the winter, in the estimation of the administration, while they feared the expense and losses that would be inflicted by the terrible blizzards and snowstorms which rage in this country. Consequently, after the crops had been garnered and conveyed to market, all the engines, trucks and cars were withdrawn from service upon a great length of line, which was abandoned practically until spring came round.

This state of affairs continued until the Indians rose up against American law and order, wiped out several men, and precipitated a general reign of terror. The Government, in order to pour troops into the disaffected territory, requested the working of the railway during the winter of 1876–7, which proved to be one of the most severe in history. Yet the line suffered less from snow than the systems in the eastern States, and, moreover, possibilities of traffic were discovered which hitherto had been considered non-existent. Needless to say, the railway never has been closed during the winter since.

Before the railway had proceeded half-way across the continent, the need for overhauling and relaying the first part of the track was felt. A higher standard of construction was therefore laid down for all the new work. Moreover, in order that the line should be completed within the shortest time possible, it was split into large sections, and the grade was driven east and west from several points simultaneously.

The mountains proved a severe stumbling-block and precipitated great delay. The country was so broken that lofty timber trestles had to be erected to be filled in with earth at a later date. Then two large tunnels had to be bored to carry the track through the Rockies, one, the Bozeman tunnel, being 3,610 feet long, and the other, the Mullan tunnel, 3,857 feet from end to end. Yet construction proceeded so successfully that the links were joined up on September 3, 1883, the last spike being driven in Hellgate Canyon, Montana. The spike used for this auspicious event was the very first that had been driven in connection with the line when it was commenced years before.

The railway has passed through many financial tribulations. On two occasions the intermediary of a receiver has been found necessary. It was hit by a panic in its very earliest days, and it failed ten years after completion, the second breakdown precipitating one of the worst financial scares in the history of the States. From the ashes, however, a new company was reconstructed, a bolder and more enterprising body of men gripped the reins, the system was pulled to pieces from end to end and rebuilt. To-day it is not only one of the finest railways in America, but one of the most popular and successful as well.

Running parallel with the Northern Pacific across the continent, but some miles nearer the international boundary, is another great artery of steel which has become a great transportation force in the United States. This is the Great Northern, likewise built through the energy of one man, Mr. James J. Hill, the empire-builder of the Great American west. Mr. Hill is a born railway magnate, and when he shook the dust of his native land—Canada—from his feet, it was merely because the Dominion at that time offered him no scope for his energies and initiative.

His life is one romance; a prolonged conquest with the unknown country, with the railway as his weapon, and with which he has overcome tremendous obstacles. The Great Northern was driven slowly across the country from the Great Lakes. Advance was risky, as the country traversed failed to promise an ounce of produce; but whenever the organiser saw that development in the country ahead was likely to take place, he drove the line forward. His motto was that “the railway must be a pioneer, leaving the settler to be brought in afterwards.” He lost no opportunity to gain revenue. For instance, when the mineral wealth of Montana attracted widespread attention, he made a journey to Butte. He found that it was costing the mines £3 8s.—$17—per ton to ship their copper to Omaha. He pondered on the subject, and suddenly announced his intention to carry his railway into Butte. He did so, and the first stroke he consummated was to transport the metal to the same eastern point at £1 13s., or $8, per ton—about 50 per cent. below the previous rate.

The desolate character of the plains of Montana, and the towering heights of the Rocky Mountains which stood right in the way of the line, were far from being attractive from the financial point of view. Yet he was convinced that traffic could be created, and was fortunate in infusing his colleagues with his enthusiasm. But if the railway’s future was precarious, that of the settler was much more so. For some miles the line ran through territory inhabited by the Indian, and which the Red Man stubbornly persisted in maintaining was his property. The result was that the white man could only live on sufferance. If he stopped too long while passing through the country he was told to move on. Mr. Hill relates an amusing instance of Red determination to seize the main chance at the settler’s expense. “When the settlers drove their cattle across Indian country in order to gain the railway, the Indians exacted a toll of 50 cents, or 2s. for the privilege of driving the cattle across three miles of their territory! They even wanted an additional amount per head—I don’t remember what it was—for the water they drank while crossing the Missouri River!”

Among the Rockies the engineer met with a spirited resistance, and the result is that the railway describes a tortuous course as it climbs up the one, and drops down the other, side. At places one may stand on the edge of a cliff where the track has been cut, and watch it following the spur for miles, steadily falling meanwhile to the head of the valley, where it describes a sweeping curve to wind back along the face of the cliff on the opposite side of the depression. Straight across it is, perhaps, not more than a mile or so, but the long detour of several miles was necessary to avoid a heavier climb. The fight for the grade is emphasised in watching an approaching train coming up the hill. It rounds the bluff on the opposite side of the valley, two ponderous 170-ton locomotives pulling and straining amid clouds of smoke and steam. Their joint labour produces a speed of about 15 miles an hour, and the roar created by the steam in harness is heard distinctly across the ravine. One follows the train on its winding course, for it is fully in sight the whole time as it swings round the curve at the end of the valley, and presently rushes by one with a terrible roar. Some twelve minutes have passed since the train first came into sight.

Among the Cascades the spectacle is more impressive. Travelling westwards, the train pauses at the mountain’s summit, and an electric locomotive is attached to haul the cars through the Cascade tunnel, a bore as straight as an arrow through the mass of rock for three miles. In ten minutes the train regains daylight, and the electric locomotive makes way for a ponderous 170-ton vibrating mass of steel and steam for the downward descent. When the railway was first opened, the crest of the range was overcome by a big switch-back, but it did not meet with official satisfaction, so it was abandoned in favour of the tunnel driven through the crest.

Directly the engine-driver releases the air-brake the train commences to move. The descent is at the rate of 116 feet to the mile, and, as may be conceived, no steaming is required to give the train momentum down the banks—it travels by gravity alone, held in check by the powerful air-brake. The train plunges into a line of snowsheds, and when it emerges, two tracks at different levels may be seen, and in the far distance, on the opposite side of the valley, is the black band of steel writhing among the crags to pass from sight round a distant shoulder. The train swings down the uppermost gallery, crosses a lofty trestle set over a rift on a curve, dives into a tunnel wherein a horse-shoe loop is completed, so that when it issues from the other portal the train speeds along the second track in the opposite direction. Then it makes another twist to swing to the opposite mountain slope. Looking back from the lowest level, the line can be seen cutting three ugly gashes among the trees clothing the mountain flanks.

The construction of this series of loops was exciting, and dangerous to the navvies, as one of their number related to me. Excavation was carried out on the two levels simultaneously, but those on the lower terrace had to maintain a vigilant eye and a keen ear. Huge ballast cars were hauled on to the upper gallery loaded with debris, and they shot this over the side to build up the grade. The result was that the men below were subjected to a heavy, intermittent bombardment, for massive pieces of rock were among the spoil. These, given a start down-hill, bounced from point to point with terrific force, until they crashed into the depths of the canyon. The men had to dodge these missiles as best they could. Sometimes they were lucky; at others they were not, and many a man received a nasty wound, a jarring blow, or a broken limb from a piece of rock in flight. Accidents from this cause were numerous, and fatalities were not infrequent.

When the Western Pacific was projected it was decided to profit from the mistakes made on the early lines in the first instance. Grades in particular were to be kept down, especially among the mountains, where a maximum rise of 1 in 100 was only to be allowed. This line completes the original idea in connection with the Denver & Rio Grande line by giving the latter an outlet from Salt Lake City to the Pacific at San Francisco.

The railway is 725 miles in length, and it was split into three sections for constructional purposes. The first extended from Salt Lake City to Oroville at the Pacific foot of the Sierras main range, the second from the latter point to Oakland on the coast, while the third was a trying short section right down to the water’s edge, at San Francisco from Oakland. Building was carried out on the three divisions simultaneously. Remarkable enterprise was displayed by the liberal resort to any new time- and labour-saving methods and implements. In the San Diablo Range the path of the track was interrupted by a depression 123 feet deep and 1,120 feet wide. That hollow had to be filled to preserve the grade. To expedite the task, an ingenious tool was devised. This was an electric scraper, and the idea was to pull this down the side of the mountain, thereby removing several tons of earth at a time, and to shoot it into the gulch. But the scraper did not come up to expectations. Breakdowns were so frequent that at last it was dismantled in disgust and thrown on one side to rust. Then another ingenious idea was tested. This was called a “merry-go-round,” something very similar to a roundabout. It comprised a revolving table overhanging the edge of the dump or embankment. A track was laid on the circumference of this turntable forming a loop. The laden trucks were run round this curve and their contents were shot overboard at the point desired, the empties continuing round the loop to the track to return to be refilled. The advantage of this arrangement was that the spoil could be discharged just where it was wanted much more quickly and easily than by the ordinary method, where the cars are pushed to the edge of the temporary track, emptied and then pulled back. As the bank grew outwards across the valley, the merry-go-round was pushed forwards, so that it always stood on the brink of the earthwork.

Among the mountains some magnificent work was accomplished. As the directing engineer remarked to the writer, it was a stiff problem to descend the western flanks of the Sierras with a 1 per cent. grade. The line crosses the mountains 2000 feet lower than the Central Pacific, and one advantage is that there are no snowsheds anywhere.

When one sees how rigorously the maximum grade has been guarded one marvels. The mountains are negotiated through Feather River Canyon, which is a duplicate of the Kicking Horse Pass that carries the Canadian Pacific main line down to the coast. The canyon is entered at Oroville, and for almost 100 miles the line rises steadily at 52 feet per mile, following the river until it at last gains an altitude of 4,817 feet. But hugging the river causes the line to meander very tortuously, for the waterway zigzags like the teeth of a saw.

Moreover, Feather River is a fearsome waterway. In its calmest moods it rushes along swiftly, but when swollen by the melting snows and countless mountain brooks it thunders and boils like a whirlpool. To escape the fury of the waters the track had to be laid well up the mountain-side, and where a fork of the river is crossed, a massive metal bridge had to be built for the reason advanced by the engineer that “Nothing but steel could be used with safety when the river is in full flood.”

Curiously enough, although Feather River Canyon had never before been selected as a passage-way through the mountains for the iron road, it was favoured by the Indian as being the easiest passage through the Sierras. Theodore Judah had noticed its advantages for the first trans-continental. But the Red Man’s trail was along the opposite bank to that preferred by the railway. At first sight it would appear as though the surveyors might have profited advantageously from the sagacity of the aborigines, but they declined to do so for a striking reason. The locaters had to pay due respect to the snowfall and the paths of avalanches. In such a gorge the former may be only a few inches on one, and as many feet on the other side, and the dangers from slides are proportionate. Such conditions prevail in this canyon. The bank selected by the engineers is exposed to the sun throughout the day, and the snowfall is very slight, whereas on the other and shaded bank it is very severe.

In ascending the canyon, very heavy development work had to be carried out. At one point a huge loop had to be described on the mountain-side, and the summit negotiated by a long tunnel beneath the Beckwourth Pass. The latter acts as a funnel or shaft for the warm “Chinook” winds, which, entering the pass, melt the snow almost as soon as it falls. Consequently, on this section snow is an insignificant enemy, and does not strike such terror into the hearts of the railway authorities as, say, on the Canadian Pacific, or the Overland route. The records at Beckwourth give the maximum depth of snow as 24 inches, so that Boreas will be kept within bounds very easily by an ordinary snow-plough. By placing the track well below the snow-line, and with the assistance of the kindly Japanese warm wind, the heavy expense of snowsheds has been avoided.

This is no mean saving either, for in many cases the cost of building these protective sheds has been more per mile than the railway itself sheltered within. On one line the average cost of this protection is £15,000 per mile, and it is necessary for 40 miles!

On the eastern sides of the mountains the railway runs into the ill-famed Humboldt River territory, which has proved a thorn in the sides of many railway-builders. This fine waterway at times bursts its bonds, floods the country, and finally follows a new course. In order to avoid any troubles from this cause, the line was kept well clear of the district, though it involved many artificial works such as bridges, embankments and tunnels, while the river is crossed 24 times in 185 miles.

Between the foothills of the Sierras and Salt Lake City two other mountain ranges had to be overcome—the Pequop and Torano chains respectively. A tunnel solves the first, and a striking piece of development work compasses the second. This is a horse-shoe curve 5 miles in length, which rises gently eastwards at the prescribed maximum grade. Had the engineers cut straight across as the crow flies, miles would have been saved, but the banks would have been three times as heavy. The eastern point of this horse-shoe brings the railway to the fringe of the Salt Lake desert, a rolling waste of salt and borax in which lies the inland sea of the same name, and whose waters in the distant past lapped the foothills of the Torano range. The rail strikes across the desert in a bee-line for 43 miles, the permanent way being as level as a billiard-table, with the rails resting on a solid mass of salt, 8 feet or more in thickness. This marked the first attempt to cross this dismal expanse by railway. Many a traveller essaying the perilous journey as a shorter cut to the country beyond has been overwhelmed by thirst or the intolerable heat, to lie down to his last rest, his bones afterwards being found bleaching in the glare of Old Sol, beating down from a cloudless sky.

One notable feature of this road is the tunnels. There are 42 in all, aggregating over 45,000 feet in length, while there are 40 steel bridges totalling a length of 9,261 feet. In one division among the Sierras, extending for a distance of 75 miles up the Feather River Canyon, grading ran into £20,000, or $100,000, per mile. Altogether some 40,000,000 cubic yards of earth were handled to form the grade. The contractors had to spend £20,000, or $100,000, alone to cut a wagon-road in order to transport supplies to their camps along the grade.

Contemporaneously with the construction of the Western Pacific railway, a third line—the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound—was being pressed across the continent for the purpose of bringing Chicago and the Atlantic seaboard into direct touch with the Pacific ports of Seattle and Tacoma on Puget Sound.

This great artery sprang from very humble beginnings. In 1865 there was a short stretch of line in the State of Minnesota which, under energetic and wise expansion, threw its tentacles in all directions, until by 1908 it had grown into a huge system known as the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway, possessing 7,451 miles of track. How it came to launch out upon this long reach to the Pacific is an interesting story, typical of railway development in the North American continent.

The eastern division of the parent system served an absolutely treeless country, though the land was among the finest imaginable for agriculture. The railway required plentiful supplies of timber, not only for its own needs, but also for those of the settlers scattered along its roads. Every foot of wood had to be cut in the far north-west lumber territory, and had to be hauled for hundreds of miles over a rival railway before it entered the territory served by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railway. Considering the enormous consumption of this commodity, the money paid over every year to the rival railway in freight charges represented a respectable figure.

Thereupon it was decided to tap the forests and to secure an outlet on the Pacific Coast at the same time. Although it was estimated that the 1,400 miles of track necessary for the purpose would cost about £20,000,000, or $100,000,000, it was calculated that the saving in freight charges for hauling timber would defray the greater part of the interest on this capital.

Work was commenced in 1906: on April 1, 1909, the last rail was laid, and the golden spike was driven home into its sleeper, with no more ceremony than if a mere siding had been completed, instead of a new trans-continental line, conforming with all up-to-date requirements as to grade, curvature and general standard of work.

The completion of such a project within three years was truly an epoch-making achievement, and, as might be supposed, a long string of record-breaking feats accompanied its realisation. In 36 months £17,000,000, or $85,000,000, were expended in the boring of tunnels, the erection of 20 miles of bridges, cuts and fills to fashion a new steel highway, and to pave it with 200,000 tons of rails. Some days the mechanical track-layer, with its load of sleepers and rails, advanced so rapidly that 5 miles of track were laid between sunrise and sunset.

Curiously enough, this new line was commenced from the banks of the same river as signalled the commencement of the first railway to the Pacific—the Missouri River—but at Mowbridge, a point some miles to the north. At the very commencement heavy expense was incurred in the building of a huge bridge across the waterway, which alone absorbed £400,000, or $2,000,000. It crosses North Dakota and Montana, where it was no uncommon circumstance to encounter isolated homesteads, the owners of which had to travel 150 miles to post a letter—a duty which, under the circumstances, was performed about once in 6 or 12 months.

In Montana the line drops into the valley of the Yellowstone River to cling to its banks. While the river winds in and out in an amazing manner, the railway follows practically a straight line through the valley, and for 117 miles it is one of the fastest stretches of track in the whole continent, there being an imperceptible rise. On paper it seems but a simple task to build such a piece of straight, level track, but in this instance it proved very expensive, for the river is crossed about once in every mile, there being 115 bridges in the 117 miles.

After leaving the Yellowstone River the work became more difficult, for three ranges of mountains had to be overcome. The battle with Nature, which had been fought by the Southern, Western, Northern Pacific and Great Northern railways respectively, had to be waged again.

At times the preservation of an easy grade proved a very knotty problem. The end was achieved only by prodigious earthworks, frequent tunnelling, as well as lofty trestling across the ravines. The curves were kept very easy, galleries being cut in the projecting humps to enable the line to follow the contour of the mountain sides, while the summits were conquered by driving tunnels through their crests at as low an altitude as practicable.

The most noteworthy tunnel is the St. Paul Pass, and here a striking record was set up, the mountain being pierced at a greater speed than has been achieved in any previous undertakings of this character. It was bored from both ends simultaneously, and although it was solid, hard rock for practically the whole of its length, an average advance of some 540 feet per month was maintained, the highest rate of progress being reached with a monthly progress of 732 feet.

Among the Cascades the tremendous ravines separating one peak from another taxed the ingenuity of the engineers sorely. It was practically what in railway parlance is described as “cut-and-fill” all the way; that is, the digging of deep cuttings here, and the raising of lofty embankments there. The cuts through the shoulders of some of these monarchs became quite respectable defiles in themselves by the time the steam shovels had retired from the scene. And the cuts were equalled in their magnitude by the “fills.” One, “Topographers’ Gulch,” is exceptionably notable. The track creeps through a deep cutting on either side to the edge of the mountain, the sides of which drop away in a steep slope to a depth of 282 feet. At track level the gulch was 800 feet across. A viaduct was at first suggested to span the gap, but it was found that the approaches were unsuitable to such a solution of the problem.

The engineer resolved to make a daring effort. He would not bridge the gulf; he would not go round it; but he would fill it up! There was plenty of material on the spot for the purpose. The question was the quickest way of accomplishing this end. When it is remembered that a twenty-storey building could have been dropped into that ravine, and that its roof then would have been only level with the proposed permanent way, it will be seen that it was a big fill indeed. How was it done? Why, by means of water jets—hydraulic sluicing—being directed against the mountain-side, dislodging the earth and speeding it down conduits into the depression. Little did the western railway foreman anticipate, when he first suggested washing down a hill to fill a rift by means of a hose as already described, that his much-ridiculed proposition ever would be called upon to fill up a chasm like this.

A powerful pumping-plant was set up, hundreds of feet of hose were laid down, and fitted with huge, powerful nozzles. Gigantic and powerful streams of water were thrown against the mountain face, and the debris thus dislodged was diverted into flumes, or wooden troughs, which emptied themselves into the valley. Before a yard of debris was tossed into that abyss, £12,000, or $60,000, had been spent. When the full blast of water was brought to bear on the face of the hill the gravel rushed down into the depression like lava pouring from a volcano in eruption. The water jets literally moved a hill into the ravine. In the course of a few weeks a neck of solid earth stretched across the abyss, affording a path for the railway.

The crossing of the Columbia River was another heavy undertaking, exceeding in character the bridge across the Missouri. At this point the river is wide, with the navigable channel in the centre, but there is a heavy rise and fall of the water according to the season, the feet of the mountains on either side being lapped when the river is in flood. The peculiar conditions necessitated a high structure, with massive stone piers supporting the steel-work. Sixteen wide spans were required. The task was carried out by the railway companies’ own bridge-engineering staff, in which class of work they are specialists and peculiarly fitted to such huge enterprises.

Such is the story of the Railway Rush across the United States to the Pacific. Yet the public clamours for further lines. The facilities extended already to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific seaboards in less than four days have served only to cause the public to emulate “Oliver Twist” and to ask for more.