Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

142 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. SNOWSHED ON SOUTHERN PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA. tween these points has a length of almost twenty-one miles. The “ Omaha Cut-off,” completed recently, takes the The Omaha a|r_jjne route. The country is Cut-off. 1 , , rugged and rolling, and the hills are of a friable material known as “ loess.” The drainage runs north and south, practically at right angles to the line, and there are no favourable water-courses for the line to follow to secure lighter earthwork. With the ex- ception of a few curves necessary to connect with the old main line near Summit, and for a similar purpose at the west end, the alignment is straight, running over hills and valleys regardless of topography and expense. To build this line involved 2,800,000 cubic yards of excavation and about 4,000,000 cubic yards of embankment. In one case, in the crossing of Big Papillon Creek, the embankment is 65 feet high and 5,600 feet long, and, with a width of 300 feet at the bottom, contains approximately 1,500,000 cubic yards. An- other fill across the Little Papillon is 89 feet high and 3,100 feet long. In this case the original width at the bottom was estimated to be 320 feet. But in the bottom of the I valley the soil is very soft, and rose up on each side of the embankment as the latter settled, adding nearly half a million cubic yards to the first estimate. An even greater work than the Omaha Cut-off is the “ Lucin Cut-off ” over the Great Salt Lake. The original route ran, as we have seen, from Ogden round the north end of the lake, round many curves, and up the heavy grades required to surmount Promon- tory and Kelton Hills. A short line along the north shore of the lake was out of the question, because of the extreme irregularity of the same.