TCRR Methods

Perhaps you’ve heard the song: “This old hammer, killed John Henry…”  He was a steel-driver on the 1870 C&O Railroad in West Virginia, a project started just after the Transcontinental Railroad was finished.  Legend has it that he raced a steam-powered rock drilling machine.  He won, only to die of a heart attack, hammer in hand.

Perhaps the crews on the TCRR wouldn’t have been so proud.  A steam-powered drilling machine would have been much easier to wield than the brute force that laid the tracks across our young nation.  This pictorial post is devoted to the methods they used.

Why couldn’t the railroads just lay track up and down hills like our interstate highway system?  Three reasons:  1. Locomotives are heavy, and they have to pull a lot of cars behind them.  2. Trains are long, and they can’t go around sharp corners without tipping over.  3.  Pulling over a long, steady incline conserves more fuel than going up and down repeatedly. 

With that in mind, Theodore Judah devised a route that could bring the trains over the 7,000 foot summit of the Sierras at only a 2% grade.  That was 105 feet per mile, according to him.  To do that, they had to fill in valleys and deal with mountains.  Here’s how they did it. 

1.  Embankments. When they just needed to fill in a little, some extra dirt and rock came in handy.

Left: Embankment in Dutch Ravine, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.  Right: High Embankment, near Auburn, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.

2. Bridges. When it was just a small creek or rivulet they had to cross, a culvert would work.  Rivers, however, required a bigger solution.

Left: American River Bridge, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.  Right: Lower Cascade Bridge, above Cisco, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.

3. Trestles. For larger valleys, the engineering took it up a notch.  Or several notches, as the case may be.

Left: Trestle Work, Promontory Point, Salt Lake Valley, 1869, Andrew J. Russell, Library of Congress.  Cropped and colorized by The Novel Historian, 2019. Right: Trestle in Clipper Ravine, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress. 

4.  Blasting.  And what about those pesky mountains rising up to destroy your perfect 2% grade?  Blast ‘em down, of course.

Note: I couldn’t find any 1860s photos of blasting. The debris wouldn’t hold still long enough for the cameras. By the 1900s, the equipment was much improved.

Left: Crew prepares to blast rock, 1926, Keystone View Company, Quebec, Canada, Library of Congress.  Right: Blast near San Francisco, CA, 1905, J. H. Mentz, Library of Congress. 

5.  Cuts.  If the blasted part of the mountain didn’t have a ceiling, it was called a cut.

Left: Bloomer Cut, near Auburn, CA, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.  Right: Rock Cut, near Auburn, CA, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.

6.  Tunnels. Of course, if the blast went through the heart of the mountain, it became a tunnel.  Note to steam train passengers: if you sit in the last car, you have a better chance of not gagging on the engine’s smoke that chokes the tunnel.

Left: Tunnel #3 above Cisco, CA, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress. 
Right: Tunnel #12, Strong’s Canyon, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.

7.  Snow Galleries. Mother Nature’s biggest monkey wrench that could grind the TCRR to a halt?  Snow.  Engineers developed massive snow plows to keep the lines open, but even that wasn’t always enough.  They built sheds called snow galleries to protect the rails from the inevitable avalanches in the high country.

Left: Storm clouds gather over the High Sierras (Yosemite), by crebizweb, pixabay.com. 
Right: Snow plow locomotive, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.
Left: Roof of Snow Gallery at Crested Peak, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.  Right: Inside Snow Gallery at Crested Peak, circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress.

If you’re enjoying this series of posts, be sure to grab your copy of the pdf report, “Five Fast Facts about the TCRR.” And be sure to check out my book, Transcontinental Runaway. The middle chapters are a tourist’s-eye-view of the TCRR in action.

Featured image credit: Summit Tunnel exterior, elevation 7042 ft., length, 1660 ft., circa 1865-69, by Alfred A. Hart, Library of Congress. Cropped and colorized 2019 by The Novel Historian.

Note:  The historic photos by Alfred A. Hart were stereographic prints.  They have been cropped to highlight the content for modern audiences.