Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
Active Member of the Western Writers Association
Click the image to
enlarge it.
In
1862, Congress passed the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing and funding the
construction of the transcontinental railroad.
Two
companies would lay the track, surveying routes, constructing trestles and
bridges, blasting tunnels through mountains or ledges out of sheer
mountainsides, fighting Native Americans who resisted whites' encroachment upon
their ancestral lands, and, of course, laying track. The Cheyenne removed
sections of track and cut telegraph lines and attacked repairmen.[1] The
Sioux and Arapaho joined them in attacking settlers, stealing from them,
removing surveyors's stakes, derailing trains, and killing railroad workers.[2]
Click the image to
enlarge it.
Along
the way, the companies' workers also strung hundreds of miles of telegraph
lines, connecting the western and the eastern halves of the nation both by both
rail and wire and making transportation and communication available across the
continental United States.
It
was a huge enterprise, the biggest of the nineteenth century, and enormously
expensive, costing between $96 million and $111.5 million[3] and
requiring 10,000 horses and as many workers for the Union Pacific Railroad
alone[4],
Irish (on the Union Pacific railroad's crews). Chinese made up 80 percent of
the Central Pacific Railroad's workers, and Civil War veterans and 1,000 freed
African-American slaves worked for both railroads.[5] Whites were paid $35 per
month, Chinese $30 per month; Chinese workers were also provided food,
including special items that had to be brought by railroad from the east.[6] In
Utah, Mormon laborers also helped to build the railroad.[7]
UPRR
workers who took their meals aboard the company's supply train ate in a dining
car, which sat 125 men per shift. Their tin plates were nailed to the tabletop,
and between meals consisting of beef, hard bread, boiled beans, and black
coffee, kitchen workers "cleaned" the plates with hand-help
"mops."[8]
Click the image to
enlarge it.
Workers
had to contend with blizzards, landslides, thunderstorms, mountains, and Native
Americans who sought to defend their lands from the iron horse and the
settlements of whites the railroad inevitably brought.
The
men who built the transcontinental railroad lived under harsh conditions.
Quarters aboard the UPRR's supply train were crowded and infested with lice, so
many men preferred to sleep in tents.[9]
Bathing occurred
rarely, and most camps smelled of sweat and worse, as drinking water was
contaminated with bacteria that caused diarrhea.[10]
Click the image to
enlarge it.
As
much as possible, construction followed a set pattern: surveyors, operating as
much as 100 miles in advance of other work crews[11],
selected the path and marked it with stakes.
Then,
grading crews leveled the pathway, building a raised bed, 12-feet wide (wide
enough to accommodate two sets of side-by-side tracks), to lay track on. The
graders' bosses leveled the bed with shovels or a heavy scraper haled by horses
or oxen. When graders ran into rocks they couldn't move, they used explosives
to blast them. Additional crews built bridges or blasted tunnels as needed.[12]
Click the image to
enlarge it.
Next,
a work crew laid ties (six-foot-long, split logs or planks) on the bed. The men
then laid 28-foot-long, 500-pound iron rails[13] on
the ties, securing them in place by hammering iron spikes through the rails and
into the wood. The track layers worked in pairs, five on each side of a rail.[14]
The
construction of the transcontinental railroad took about six years. The CPRR
broke ground in Omaha, Nebraska, on January 8, 1863, and its railroad joined
the UPRR's line at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869.
There's
much more to the story, including the solutions engineers developed for the
tremendous problems they encountered due to adverse weather and seemingly
insurmountable obstacles that certain terrain features presented. Greed and
immorality also caused complications and significant cost overruns. Look for
these stories in future posts!
[1]The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes
[2]The
Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske
[3]The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes
[4]Ibid.
[5]The
Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske
[6]The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes
[7]The
Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid.
[10]The
Transcontinental Railroad by Christine Zuchora-Walske
[11]The
Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.
[12]The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes
[13]The
Incredible Transcontinental Railroad by Conrad Stein.
[14]The
Building of the Transcontinental Railroad by Peggy Caravantes
No comments:
Post a Comment