Pioneer railways are not like works at home. The lines are single, with
crossing places every five, ten, or twenty miles; ballast is not always
used, the lines on prairies being laid for long stretches on the earth
formation; rivers, chasms, canons and cataracts are crossed by timber
trestle bridges. The rails, of steel, are flat bottomed, fastened by
spikes, 60 lbs. to the yard, except through the mountains, where they
are 70 lbs.
Begun as pioneer works, they undergo, as traffic progresses, many
improvements. Ballast is laid down. Iron or steel bridges are
substituted for timber. The gorges spanned by trestles are, one by one,
filled up, by the use of the steam digger to fill, and the ballast
plough to push out, the stuff from the flat bottomed wagons on each
side and through the interstices of, the trestles. Sometimes the timber
is left in; sometimes it is drawn out and used elsewhere. This trestle
bridge plan of expediting the completion, and cheapening the
construction, of new railways, wants more study, at home. Whenever
there are gorges and valleys to pass in a timbered country, the
facility they give of getting "through" is enormous. The Canadian
Pacific would not be open now, but for this facility.
All these lines across the Continent have very similar features.
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