



Produced by Cornell University




THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.


A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.



VOL. II.--NOVEMBER, 1858.--NO. XIII.




RAILWAY-ENGINEERING IN THE UNITED STATES.[1]

Though our country can boast of no Watt, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie,
Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, or Fairbairn, and lacks such
experimenters as Tredgold, Barlow, Hodgkinson, and Clark, yet we
have our Evans and Fulton, our Whistler, Latrobe, Roebling, Haupt,
Ellet, Adams, and Morris,--engineers who yield to none in
professional skill, and whose work will bear comparison with the
best of that of Great Britain or the Continent; and if America does
not show a Thames Tunnel, a Conway or Menai Tubular Bridge, or a
monster steamer, yet she has a railroad-bridge of eight hundred feet
clear span, hung two hundred and fifty feet above one of the wildest
rivers in the world,--locomotive engines climbing the Alleghanies at
an ascent of five hundred feet per mile,--and twenty-five thousand
miles of railroad, employing upwards of five thousand locomotives
and eighty thousand cars, costing over a thousand millions of dollars,
and transporting annually one hundred and thirty millions of
passengers and thirty million tons of freight,--and all this in a
manner peculiarly adapted to our country, both financially and
mechanically.

In England the amount of money bears a high proportion to the amount
of territory; in America the reverse is the case; and the engineers
of the two countries quickly recognized the fact: for we find our
railroads costing from thirty thousand to forty thousand dollars per
mile,--while in England, to surmount much easier natural obstacles,
the cost varies from seventy-five to one hundred thousand dollars
per mile.

The cost of railroad transport will probably never be so low as
carriage by water,--that is, natural water-communication; because
the river or ocean is given to man complete and ready for use,
needing no repairs, and with no interest to pay upon construction
capital. Indeed, it is just beginning to be seen all over the
country that the public have both expected and received too much
accommodation from the companies. Men are perfectly willing to pay
five dollars for riding a hundred miles in a stage-coach; but give
them a nicely warmed, ventilated, cushioned, and furnished car, and
carry them four or five times faster, with double the comfort, and
they expect to pay only half-price,--as a friend of the writer once
remarked, "Why, of course we ought not to pay so much when we a'n't
half so long going,"--as if, when they paid their fare, they not
only bargained for transport from one place to another, but for the
luxury of sitting in a crowded coach a certain number of hours. It
would be hard to show a satisfactory basis for such an establishment
of tolls. We need not wonder at the unprofitableness of many of our
roads when we consider that the relative cost of transport is,--

  By Stage, one cent,
  By Railroad, two and seven-twelfths;

and the relative charge,--

  By Stage, five cents,
  By Railroad, three cents;

and the comparative profit, as five less one to three less two and
seven-twelfths, or as _four_ to _five-twelfths_, or as _nine and
six-tenths to one_.

America has, it is true, a grander system of natural
water-communication than any other land except Brazil; but, for all
that, there is really but a small part of the area, either of the
Alleghany coal and iron fields, or of the granaries of the
Mississippi valley, reached even by our matchless rivers. A certain
strip or band of country, bordering the water-courses, is served by
them both as regards export and import; just as much is served
wherever we build a railroad. In fact, whenever we lay a road across
a State, whether it connects the West directly with the East, or
only with some central commercial point in the West, just so often
do we open to market a band of country as long as the road, and
thirty, forty, or fifty miles wide,--the width depending very much
upon the cost of transport over such road; and as the charge is much
less upon a railroad than upon a common road, the distance from the
road from which produce may be brought is much greater with the
former than with the latter. The actual determination of the width
of the band is a simple problem, when the commercial nature of the
country is known.

The people of the great valley have not been