There is another problem for roadbed fill stability besides compaction. That is the type of soil under the fill. Pioneering railroad routes encountered lots of peat bogs and similar organic soil. These soils never stabilize. Not only are they fundamentally un-compacted in situ, but they are also incapable of being compacted. So, if you place a fill on these organic soils, the weight of the fill alone is likely to cause settling by displacing the underlying organic soil. The organic soil will push out at each side and heave upward in response to the weight of the fill. It is like stepping on toothpaste.
The only way to build a successful fill on these organic soils is to remove them down to stable sub-soil and replace them with good fill material. This is called soil correction. It can add considerable cost because the organic soil might be 10-40 feet thick. Furthermore, removing the organic soil often requires digging in water because organic soil is often found in boggy areas. And then once the organic soil is removed, you have open water to receive the new proper fill.
Filling the good material into water makes it impossible to properly compact it. Certainly you can’t fill in lifts and compact each one, because it would require working under water. The only way to overcome this problem is to fill into the water with the most ideal granular material. This type of material will displace the water as it falls into place and become stable as the dry fill adds weight as it is place atop the wet fill.
This type of soil correction was mostly out of the question in the 1800s. So the new fill was simply laid on top of the organic and saturated soil. When the fill sunk, more was added. Generally a lot of earthmoving continued after the railroad was built. Dirt was hauled to low areas on trains of flatcars and dumped off the sides. When the steam shovel era dawned, something called the Lidgerwood Unloader was invented. It was a big steam powered cable winch on a special car that dragged a sort of “V” plow down the decks of a train of flatcars, and the plow pushed the dirt off of the cars on each side.
There are stories of railroad companies trying to stabilize sinking fill by dumping logs and trees into the morass until the sinking stopped.
In The Impossible Railway Pierre Berton explains how the Canadian Pacific dealt with peat bogs as well as a lot of other problems.
John WR DSchmittWhile he was not an engineer Harriman probably had inspected other railroad properties and thus was familiar with the apearance of ballasted track. He probably asked the question because the width of ballast on the UP looked excessive when compared to other railroads. Harriman first got into the railraod business in 1881 and according to Maury Klein this happened about 1899. Over the almost 20 years of involvement I imagine he did have opportunities to inspect railroad properties. However, Klein does not discuss that or give any insight to what he might have saw when he looked at them so I simply don't know.
DSchmittWhile he was not an engineer Harriman probably had inspected other railroad properties and thus was familiar with the apearance of ballasted track. He probably asked the question because the width of ballast on the UP looked excessive when compared to other railroads.
Harriman first got into the railraod business in 1881 and according to Maury Klein this happened about 1899. Over the almost 20 years of involvement I imagine he did have opportunities to inspect railroad properties. However, Klein does not discuss that or give any insight to what he might have saw when he looked at them so I simply don't know.
Well, if you "simply don't know" then why did you use this thread to trash Harriman? The thread had nothing to do with either Harriman or ballast.
It seems to me that you are interpreting the book to suit your own prejudice against men of commerce. In this case a great man of commerce who did great work that greatly benefited the people of the United States.
For example, Klein writes that Harriman relied on "Knowing more than anyone else by doing his homework and on sound judgment that required clear, fresh thinking." You left that out and labeled Harriman as someone who shot from the hip.
Now shooting from the hip is sometimes the right thing to do, if you know what you are doing. ("Ready, Fire, Aim".) A good manager knows when to do it. (Think of Hunter Harrison and his decision about getting on/off moving equipment.) But Harriman wasn't typically a man who did that. As Klein writes, Harriman was a man who did his homework.
You just wanted to trash him. And you quoted selectively from a book to do so.
greyhounds John WR DSchmittWhile he was not an engineer Harriman probably had inspected other railroad properties and thus was familiar with the apearance of ballasted track. He probably asked the question because the width of ballast on the UP looked excessive when compared to other railroads. Harriman first got into the railraod business in 1881 and according to Maury Klein this happened about 1899. Over the almost 20 years of involvement I imagine he did have opportunities to inspect railroad properties. However, Klein does not discuss that or give any insight to what he might have saw when he looked at them so I simply don't know. Well, if you "simply don't know" then why did you use this thread to trash Harriman? The thread had nothing to do with either Harriman or ballast. It seems to me that you are interpreting the book to suit your own prejudice against men of commerce. In this case a great man of commerce who did great work that greatly benefited the people of the United States. For example, Klein writes that Harriman relied on "Knowing more than anyone else by doing his homework and on sound judgment that required clear, fresh thinking." You left that out and labeled Harriman as someone who shot from the hip. Now shooting from the hip is sometimes the right thing to do, if you know what you are doing. ("Ready, Fire, Aim".) A good manager knows when to do it. (Think of Hunter Harrison and his decision about getting on/off moving equipment.) But Harriman wasn't typically a man who did that. As Klein writes, Harriman was a man who did his homework. You just wanted to trash him. And you quoted selectively from a book to do so.
As stated in the above comment..let us try to imagine the possibility that one can stick to the OP and not go all awry here, please
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
blownout cylinder greyhounds John WR DSchmittWhile he was not an engineer Harriman probably had inspected other railroad properties and thus was familiar with the apearance of ballasted track. He probably asked the question because the width of ballast on the UP looked excessive when compared to other railroads. Harriman first got into the railraod business in 1881 and according to Maury Klein this happened about 1899. Over the almost 20 years of involvement I imagine he did have opportunities to inspect railroad properties. However, Klein does not discuss that or give any insight to what he might have saw when he looked at them so I simply don't know. Well, if you "simply don't know" then why did you use this thread to trash Harriman? The thread had nothing to do with either Harriman or ballast. It seems to me that you are interpreting the book to suit your own prejudice against men of commerce. In this case a great man of commerce who did great work that greatly benefited the people of the United States. For example, Klein writes that Harriman relied on "Knowing more than anyone else by doing his homework and on sound judgment that required clear, fresh thinking." You left that out and labeled Harriman as someone who shot from the hip. Now shooting from the hip is sometimes the right thing to do, if you know what you are doing. ("Ready, Fire, Aim".) A good manager knows when to do it. (Think of Hunter Harrison and his decision about getting on/off moving equipment.) But Harriman wasn't typically a man who did that. As Klein writes, Harriman was a man who did his homework. You just wanted to trash him. And you quoted selectively from a book to do so. As stated in the above comment..let us try to imagine the possibility that one can stick to the OP and not go all awry here, please
DSchmitt, maybe it's time to start a new thread on compaction.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Paul of Covington DSchmitt, maybe it's time to start a new thread on compaction
While both went off topic, between this thread started by me and the original thread titled "Compaction" started by Murphy Siding, I think the subject has been pretty well covered for now. However, I am sure it will come up again.
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Speaking for myself, on first reading I thought the post was referring to those materials which are used to make a right of way. After some web surfing and re-reading the post I think you intended to talk about the naturally occurring soil on with the rest of the road bed is placed.
I don't want to be critical here; we are having a conversation and not writing a PhD thesis. I do make my best effort to stick to the topic introduced and if I have gone astray here I apologize.
So? How do you compact a unstable thread built on boggy logic and permafrost words?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD So? How do you compact a unstable thread built on boggy logic and permafrost words?
You pack it full of trash until it won't take anymore.
BaltACDSo? How do you compact a unstable thread built on boggy logic and permafrost words
With great difficulty. There were places where the CP dumped in hugh amounts of fill until things were stable, built their track and started running trains. And then the track would cave in, swallowing up a whole train and they started over. Eventually they succeeded.
From the first post of borh compaction threads:
"Murphy Siding asked:
We've all seen photos from 100 or more years ago, showing men with teams of horses grading a future railroad ROW. Once they heaped up the prairie to the correct height, and leveled it, how was the dirt compacted to carry the weight of a train without uneven settling?"
What is unclear about this question?
However discussion of the the ballast, a very closely related topic, is I think not out of bounds.
The discussion of Harriman did go beyond the purpose of the thread, but could be an interesting topic if the posters leave their own personalities out of it.
BucyrusFor railroad grades, I see three distinct phases of earthmoving art as follows: 1) The horse and scraper/pick and shovel phase used up to generally circa 1880-90. 2) The steam shovel/dump train/fill trestle phase used circa 1880-90 to 1915. 3) The current power equipment cutting, hauling, and filling phase. Phase #1 provided compaction from horses and pulled equipment. Phase #3 has provided compaction from power equipment including specific compaction equipment. It is phase #2 that raises a question as to how compaction was achieved. For the fill operation alone, this phase had no need for horse or equipment traffic working on the fill surface. So if this fill was compacted, it would have required horse or power equipment working the fill surface just for the purpose of compacting it. I have no knowledge of this being done, but if it was, it would have been complicated by the presence of the trestle rising out of the fill. The trestle piling and braces would have been obstacles to the compacting operation.
1) The horse and scraper/pick and shovel phase used up to generally circa 1880-90.
2) The steam shovel/dump train/fill trestle phase used circa 1880-90 to 1915.
3) The current power equipment cutting, hauling, and filling phase.
Phase #1 provided compaction from horses and pulled equipment.
Phase #3 has provided compaction from power equipment including specific compaction equipment.
It is phase #2 that raises a question as to how compaction was achieved. For the fill operation alone, this phase had no need for horse or equipment traffic working on the fill surface. So if this fill was compacted, it would have required horse or power equipment working the fill surface just for the purpose of compacting it. I have no knowledge of this being done, but if it was, it would have been complicated by the presence of the trestle rising out of the fill. The trestle piling and braces would have been obstacles to the compacting operation.
The only remaining question I have pertains to what I mentioned earlier about earthmoving phase #2.
John WR BaltACDSo? How do you compact a unstable thread built on boggy logic and permafrost words With great difficulty. There were places where the CP dumped in hugh amounts of fill until things were stable, built their track and started running trains. And then the track would cave in, swallowing up a whole train and they started over. Eventually they succeeded.
I have, but am currently unable to find, a copy of document that discusses the the building the roadbed between Suisun City and Benicia. I don't remember how many times they thought the roadbed was stabilized and even ran some trains only to have the track disappear into the muck within a few days. However, I don't remember any mention of trains sinking in that area. They had an alternate route, the original longer line, through the hills to Vallejo.
If my memory serves me right, the Monon built a "floating bridge" with a low speed restriction across a very deep bog. It was bypassed in the Barriger era when the Cedar Lake cutoff was built.
Here in NE Minnesota we mix a lot of peat and muskeg with very heavy rail traffic.
There are three ways to cross a peat bog.
You can build a bridge. In deep muskeg areas this may be the only option. I once watched a pile driver on BN where they were replacing a wooden trestle over a short, deep "bottomless" muskeg bog with a steel and concrete bridge. It was winter so there was ice on top of the muskeg. The pile driver gave the steel piling one beat to break through the ice and it went all the way down under its own weight. Two more sticks of piling were welded on until it met resistance. The piling sticks were 40 feet long.
You can dig out the peat and replace it with granular fill that naturally compacts. Sometimes a supercharge of fill is placed on top to do the compaction and later removed.
You can envelop the peat with a wide, thick base of granular fill. This involves filling much wider than the roadbed. As long as the peat is compressed evenly without shearing it will form a stable base. Nature uses this method in the extreme to form lignite and coal.
In the early days many railroads and roads were built on corduroy road where logs were laid side by side across the soft ground to form a base for the roadbed. Eventually these sank to equilibrium under load.
For the trestle and fill compaction, no it generally wasn't compacted and many areas still need an occasional side dump car load 100 years later to stabilize the bank. Once traffic started it went slow with a lot of maintenance effort for the first few years until the roadbed somewhat stabilized and the ballast could be brought up to level.
Redore,
thanks for posting!
- Erik
PRR was a heavy user of rail anchors. But not SP or UP
That is great information. I have heard of floating a foundation on top of peat. Your description of corralling the peat with good fill so the peat will support a load is interesting. You reference Minnesota for the presence of bogs and peat. There is a legend of a “lost train” in Devils Lake at Pine City, MN. But this was a long, long time ago. The first railroad through Pine City then was the Lake Superior & Mississippi RR, which later became the NP. I would assume the legendary lost train was lost prior to 1900.
I have little to go by. I spoke to a woman, who claimed to have heard the story from her grandfather who lived in Pine City in that early time frame. She told me that he told her that they heard the train coming from the south one night, but it never arrived. So they walked the tracks south out of town to see if they could discover what happened to the train.
About a mile to the south, they arrived at Devils Lake which was situated right along the east side of the railroad. They found the tracks all tore up and dislocated, and coming from the south, the track veered right into Devils Lake. There was no sign of the train.
That is a pretty wild tale as it suggests the permanent disappearance of an entire train. There are reports that divers once found the remnants of railroad boxcars deep in Devils Lake in the 1950s. When I think of an entire train going into the lake and submerging, I tend to think of a passenger train because of the relatively short length.
But there is another bit of corroborating evidence of this legend. The woman who told me about this story also provided newspaper clippings from the 1880s that had a story about the oddly unstable ground around Devils Lake. They asked: “What kind land is this?” “It appears that the land to the west of Devils Lake is sliding into the lake.” They went on to detail their recommendation that the railroad company should stage a watchman there night and day to protect the trains from the tracks being damaged by the shifting ground.
Devils Lake is only 18 acres, but it is about 90 feet deep. Cross Lake is several miles long and roughly 1000 feet wide. It is the northernmost lake in a chain that includes Devils Lake, Squaw Lake, and Rock Lake. It is said that the four lakes are all connected underground. From the satellite map, you can see a sort of fault line connecting the four lakes as well as extending several miles in each direction from them. I was told that during construction of one of the highways nearby, they were filling into a bog which just kept swallowing the fill. Then they noticed the water in Devils Lake was getting really muddy, apparently due to an underground connection to where they were filling.
I have just found that in the book of photographs called Pine City by Arcadia Publishing, they state that there is a legend that Devils Lake swallowed a circus train in the 1800s, and it was never found. That is the first reference that I have heard regarding the type of train. I plan on contacting them to see where they got that information.
Oddly, it seems that way up north you have problems similar to ours in southern Louisiana. I don't have any knowledge about how railroads were built in this area, except that the NS route heading NE from New Orleans was claimed to be the longest trestle in the world when built, but after being opened fill was dumped below and around it till only about five miles across Lake Pontchartrain was left.
Some of you may be interested in how highways are built in our soft mud. Either of two methods is used, but both start from the nearest navigable waterway from which you dredge a canal along the ROW. One method is to pump sand in to fill the canal to a height considerably higher than the surrounding land and let it settle for a few months before paving. The other option is to build a bridge in the canal, working from barges with pre-fabricated pilings and spans. If you have time, and if you like Google Earth as much as I do, you can go to 30deg 05' 18" W, 90deg 26' 24 N, which is the junction of I10 and I55. From here, at least 22 miles west is dredge and fill. About 11 miles east and about 22 miles north are dredge and bridge.
When my Mother lived in Florida, I would go to visit and stay in the home she owned, but drive to visit her in the nursing home where she lived. One day on the way back from a visit (I was traveling north in Eustis), I noticed something I thought I had missed all the other times I had driven that route... a Diesel engine sitting in what appeared to be a small park. I knew that RR's donated Steam Locomotives to communities for display in parks, but I had never seen a Diesel in one. I was stuck in traffic and had a chance to look at it really good and noted that it didn't seem to be on any sort of track, it was just sitting on the ground! I wondered if maybe it had just been delivered and the park was not ready with track yet.
Then just as traffic started to move, so did the Diesel! I about wrecked the car!
Seems it was not a park, but just a vacant lot with a RR track through it! I went back the next day and found a place to park so I could go inspect it a bit. The track had ties, but they were buried right to the top with the rails between the ties in direct contact with the ground. The grass around it was as tall as the rails, which is why it looked like the engine was sitting on the ground. There was no ballast visible anywhere... just the tops of the ties and grass as tall as the rails. Up close I could see where the ties were by the absence of grass in stripes across the track; but from the street I could not even see that. The rails were shiny as though it was used regularly.
When I got back to my car, a man was walking past and I commented that I had never seen a RR track without ballast and he said he had never really seen one WITH ballast! He said he had lived in the area all his life and the track had always been buried in the ground like that and he assumed all RR tracks were like that and had wondered about photos of track showing it elevated on a "strip of large rocks".
I wanted to discuss it with him further, but Mother was expecting me for lunch!
That afternoon, while Mom was watching her "Soaps" on TV, I went in search of other tracks and did find some on ballast, but not nearly as neatly done as what I am used to in Indiana or Iowa. But in many areas the track was "in the ground", with no visible ballast. I always have wondered how often they have to come along and jack it up out of the sandy mire.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Semper Vaporo But in many areas the track was "in the ground", with no visible ballast. I always have wondered how often they have to come along and jack it up out of the sandy mire.
In discussion the topic is often the ideal way to do something. There is a lot of discussion about very small differences. And then you find out how things are actually done in some places. And this is done by a real railroad company.
As well as I can tell, the track already existed in 1893, and was known as the St. Johns and Lake Eustis Railway--which was a part of the Tropical Trunk Line. This became a part of the ACL and later, as of 1999, a part of the Florida Central..
Johnny
Just about every county in Minnesota that had logging railroads has a story of the first or last train of the winter breaking through the ice and sinking into a peat or muskeg swamp. Many have a smoke stack sticking up out of the swamp to this day. I've never found an actual one. These were temporary lines laid for winter operation when the ground was frozen and rock hard.
The third difficult soil in the upper Midwest is red clay. Even though it is not swamp or bog, it never stabilizes if cut. It's a heck of a soil condition to build in. Like building in a pile of grease. BN abandoned a very long steel trestle south of Superior WI in favor of an abandoned parallel Soo trestle built in better soil conditions. The approaches to the ex GN trestle never could be stabilized after 80 years of operation. The GN trestle was in red clay.
I'm not familiar with the Devil's lake area you talked about but it sounds like a lake surrounded by floating bog, similar to muskeg but with an open lake in the middle. Sometimes the wind can even break big chunks (one acre or more) loose and blow them across the lake.
I have heard a lot of those lost train stories about logging railroads. They are numerous, but elusive to actually track down. Still, there is a high probability of truth to them considering the rickety and temporary nature of logging railroads, and the wild country they passed through. Specifically, there is a story of a log train and track sitting on the bottom of Many Point Lake in northwestern Minnesota. Temporary track laid across frozen lakes is a common explanation for sunken train legends. I recall when they were moving a house across the ice of Lake Superior between Madeline Island and the mainland. The sizeable house with all the furnishings ended up sitting on the lake bottom.
Actually Devils Lake is in kind of rolling land with sandy clay composition. Somebody had mentioned that it was formed by an earthquake, and the underground connection with several other lakes is part of the fault line related to the earthquake. Somehow this story about the earthquake, fault line, underground connections, and unstable ground all seems connected. And it perfectly relates to the verbal transmission of the legend referring to finding the railroad all dislocated with the track running right into the lake the day the train never showed up.
I contacted Arcadia Publishing to ask where they got the information that the lake swallowed a circus train, and am still waiting to hear back from the author of the book I mentioned above. I would love to find this in the historical record. Searching the old newspapers is the most likely way to find documentation. I can’t imagine a circus train plunging into a lake without fatalities. And fatalities would almost guarantee that the story was covered in the newspapers.
Skin divers have gone into the lake, but diving in dark water is difficult. Not only is it hard to see, but it is very spooky. I would describe it as terrifying. From the surface, Devils Lake looks like Coca-Cola.
I have attached an ACME map showing Devils Lake marked “A”. You can see the long and narrow Cross Lake extending north; and the little Squaw Lake and Rock Lake to the south. You can also see the connecting fault and the fault extending quite a distance southwest of Rock Lake. You can see the railroad along the west side of Devils Lake. You can use the zoom tool to get in really close. The image resolution is quite good.
http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=45.82366,-92.93592&z=13&t=H&marker0=45.81663%2C-92.96421%2C1.1%20km%20SxSE%20of%20Pine%20City%20MN
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