Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume I

264 ENGINEERING WONDERS OF THE WORLD. MAKING THE DUMP. built at that point. Then the teams began their monoton- ous ceaseless circling, first scraping in as much sod as the engineer in charge would allow (a knotty point this, as sod bulks quickly in a dump and settles proportionately), and then covering it neatly and quickly with earth. On the level prairie this work would go with marvellous rapidity, gang moving on past gang till at the end of the day one outfit had perhaps built some two or three miles of dump. height of grade, or “ fill,” necessary at that point. The top of the completed fill or “ dump ” must be 14 feet wide ; so on either side of this centre peg another peg was driven, the distance between the two showing the width necessary at the foot of the fill to en- sure the natural earth slope being maintained on each side. A sub-contractor’s outfit consisted of thirty or forty teams and perhaps one hundred men, and was in itself a little army, every member of which, after the first few weeks, became drilled into a very per- fect understanding of his duties. Each outfit would be subdivided into two, three, or four gangs of ten teams under the control of foremen. To each gang were allotted five stations, and two teams with their teamsters and a scrape-holder to each station; every gang or two gangs having a special four-horse ploughing team to loosen the earth for the scrapers to move. The first care of the foreman was to replace the centre grade pegs with stout firmly into the ground, each Allotment of Work. Forming the Dump. stakes driven being the exact height of the dump to be “ Muskegs ” give Trouble. After the scrapers came the trimmers, whose business it was to level care- fully the top of the dump ready for the cross- ties. “ Muskegs,” encountered on the prairie sec- tions as well as among the timber, proved very thorns in the sides of those unfortunate sub- contractors whose allotted por- tions included one or even two. By hook or by crook sufficient dirt had to be scraped, wheeled, or shovelled on to the quaking turf to prevent the horses from breaking through. Then the wheel-scrapers came into play, bearing earth from neighbouring cuttings, or on level ground from “ borrowing-pits,” and piling it on top of the shaking morass till the whole seemed to find solid bottom. The dump would often be built the correct height during the day only to sink several feet during the succeeding night, and need rebuilding again and again. A good, well-driven team on easy work might place as much as 100 cubic yards in a ten-hour day, sometimes even more, and as the price paid the sub-contractors varied from 10 to 15 cents per yard, measured in the completed dump, a good stretch of easy work from three to five feet in height meant handsome profits.