Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

140 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. OVERLAND LIMITED ON LUCIN CUT-OFF TRESTLE; {Photo, Southern Pacific Railway Company.) the Laramie plains by cuts in the undulations of the ground. When winter came the cuts were blockaded by snow, and they had to be refilled subsequently at a cost of between five and ten million dollars. Experience taught the Government to worry the engineers less and less as the work proceeded, and to trust General Dodge to take the best line. How thorough, the general was in his surveys is shown by his own words. “We had to study every summit, every mountain side, every valley, to find from the currents which was the snowy side and which the barren ; and over the whole 1,500 miles of line located, for three winters we kept the engineers in tents or dug-outs watching, from four to six months, the drift of snow and water to be overcome, and the safest, surest, and most effectual methods of doing it.” The report issued by the Government Com- mission in 1869 made some severe strictures on the location of the Central Pacific through the Sierra Nevada. The cur- vature was excessive and need- Criticisms of lessly sharp. Throughout a thpacjf?tral large portion the ascents and descents had been multiplied needlessly. Grades of 70 to 80 feet per mile had been in- troduced where one of 53 feet per mile would have sufficed, and grades of 53 where not half that rate of ascent was required. In the Humboldt Valley, between Humboldt Lake and Humboldt Wells, the difference in ele- vation of a little over 1,100 feet had been overcome by ascents and descents amounting to 6,232 feet in a distance of 290 miles. In justice to the builders, it must be remem- bered that at the time when the line was located and construction carried out, th© facilities of the present day were not avail-