1880's railroad engineering

[tree68]

I would argue that the two structures are representative of the available technologies for such structures at the time they were built.

Tunkahannock was (and still is) considered ground-breaking technology at the time it was built. 

[henry6]

But, Tree, that is assuming identical obsticals and reasons for building.  The answer lies at the specific locationsof Starrucca vs Tunkannonk and the availaility of the stone, etc.  We cannot compare projects or locations but ony time periods.

[tree68]

henry6

Even my example of Starrucca is open for critique as perhaps local cut stone would not be the choice of material today.

One only needs to drive the 40 miles from Lanesboro to Nicholson to get the answer to that one - Tunkahannock Viaduct, built of concrete by the Lackawanna. 

[henry6]

I think it goes without saying that today's knowledge and technology would allow for at least a differently built if not better built anything.  And of course the further back in time you go the more accurate the statement.  However the real challanging quesiton is there a project existing today built before, say 1900, that would be built exactly the same way as then?  Even my example of Starrucca is open for critique as perhaps local cut stone would not be the choice of material today.

[Murphy Siding]

     I've picked up bits and pieces in this thread,  suggesting that some monumental engineering projects could have been less costly, if perhaps the lines were laid out differently.  What were some of those?  Off the top of my head,  I'm thinking of things like the Starrucca Viaduct, or Moffet Tunnel, or Lucien  Cut-off(?)  I'm giving the engineers the benefit of the doubt,  assuming that they made the best decisions, most of the time.  (But then,  I sometimes work with architects, who are good examples of puttingego before common sense.)

[Anonymous]

henry6

Not all is doomed, somehow it all evolves and continues moving.  But I would rather discuss railroads and railroading here and not get sidetracked in discussions of politics, religion, and other philsophies.

That’s fine. We don’t have to discuss it, but you brought it up.  I just figured you could explain it.

[henry6]

Not all is doomed, somehow it all evolves and continues moving.  But I would rather discuss railroads and railroading here and not get sidetracked in discussions of politics, religion, and other philsophies.

[Anonymous]

henry6

It

Bucyrus

henry6

The problem is not democracy but human behavior.

What's wrong with human behavior?

It marrs definitions, twists concepts, becomes immoral, makes devisive decisons, adulterates and alters philosophies, becomes evangistic inits own thoughts disregarding other's.  Just for starters.

This discussion has touched the relative merits and defects of democracy.  Since you brought up your list of human deficiencies seemingly to explain why democracy is defective, what is your solution, or do you simply believe that all systems of government are doomed to failure because of destructive human characteristics?

[henry6]

It

Bucyrus

henry6

The problem is not democracy but human behavior.

What's wrong with human behavior?

It marrs definitions, twists concepts, becomes immoral, makes devisive decisons, adulterates and alters philosophies, becomes evangistic inits own thoughts disregarding other's.  Just for starters.

 

And, RWM...unfortunately Ambrose has been tainted and therefore will be looked at by me and others with a jaundiced eye.  I suppose if I had read everything he ever wrote and was able to verify it all, I might have a different viewpoint.  But for now, for me, his writings are suspect.

[greyhounds]

Railway Man

 

Everyone in the transportation business, Congress, and the lobbying circles knew then how heavy trucks could be.  And trucks with the axle loadings that we have today had already been in widespread use by 1950.  But despite that knowledge, the Eisenhower Highway System, better known as the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, intentionally chose to undersize pavement thickness and bridge strength resulting in the failure of the pavement and bridges in short order on a great swath of the system.  This decision which in hindsight seems unfathomably stupid happened because while everyone thought Interstate highways were a wonderful idea (even the railroad lobby!), no one wanted to be responsible for paying for them:

1. Rich states did not want to transfer money to poor states
2. Populated states did not want to transfer money to unpopulated states
3. The Republican party did not want a new tax
4. The Democratic party did not want new debt
5. The oil industry did not want a fuel tax
6. The rubber industry did not want a tire tax
   
7. The railroads did not want to be taxed for highways
8. The truckers did not want to pay for anything whatsoever
   
9. The AAA did not want auto drivers to be paying for the thick pavement that trucks needed but cars didn't
10. The states and their highway departments did not want to be left holding the bag for building and maintaining highways that primarily benefited other states (pass-through trucking)

The poisionous compromise worked out was that the Federal Act would pay for only the minimum possible pavement thickness for the best possible soils.  But the best possible soils do not exist in most of the nation!  Instead, Congress, its decision-making the usual realpolitik mess of party ideology, lobbying money, and thousands of tangential concerns, decided that thicker pavement and stronger bridges were a maintenance issue and maintenance should be the problem of individual states, not the Federal Goverment.  So it only paid for the thinnest possible pavement and the cheapest possible bridges, condemning the system to premature failure and wasting most of the money spent on pavement, bridges, and subgrade preparation.

Of all places, on the FHWA website, there is an excellent history of the sausage factory, I mean Washington decision-making process that led to the creation of the Interstate Highway attention.  Read particularly, please, the parts where the railroad lobby is discussed, because (to my surprise) the railroad lobby actually was correct.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/killbill.cfm

After you read this, you might be like me and wonder if democracy is such a great idea after all!

RWM

Well, now that I've got the time to read the link, I can't access it for some reason.  I'll keep trying.

But in the meantime....

Every one of the 10 "positions" presented above is reasonable and logical with the exception of #8, "The truckers did not want to pay for anything whatsoever".  People and institutions holding positions such as these will to try to influence the government's action.  They're going to do it with publicity stunts, logic, reason, bribes, whatever.  This attempted influence will happen no matter what the form of government.  Even in a dictatorship there would be "intrigues" aimed at influencing the outcome.

Now here comes my own "ideology", or reasoned economic convictions as I prefer to call it.

Government action will always be the result of political compromises that produce sub-optimal results.  Heck Fire, the first US transcontinental railroad was stalled by political disagreement over what route should be built.  Nobody knows how long the delay would have gone on, or what wierd result would have developed, if several southern states hadn't tried to leave the United States and form their own country.  With their representatives temporarily out of congress, things got moving.

Some things just have to be done by governments.  Local road networks, judicial systems, etc.  We need to accept that, pay the taxes, and realize that those things will always be the result of poltical processes and compromises that are going to produce sub-optimal results.

But when you get the government involved in writing such things as pavement specifications for buiding the Interstate System, you're asking for trouble.  The only real action needed by the government would have been the granting of "Eminent Domain" condemnation rights to private companies seeking to build the super-highways.  The toll super-highways could have been built by private companies just as most of the railroads were;  do a traffic estimate, line up investors, and build.  That would have been far  more likely to produce a near-optimal result than the political intrigue and compromise of Washington, DC.  And the truckers would have had to pay their own way.  Private companies don't set up cross-subsidies, governments do.

 

 

[Railway Man]

henry6

Railway Man

 

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/killbill.cfm

After you read this, you might be like me and wonder if democracy is such a great idea after all!

RWM

 

Nothing in there I hadn't surmised especially in view of Eisenhower's admonisment of not trusting the industrial-military complex and his advisors warning of gas crisies and supply shortages of petroleum. But where I do have a problem with the piece is that he quotes Stephen Ambrose who is noted for plagurisms and other self inspirations. The other problem is that the piece was altered in 12/08 according to a note at the bottom but does not explain what was changed and why.  Churchill's quote about democracy is good and accurate.  The problem is not democracy but human behavior.

 

 

Stephen Ambrose was an outstanding historian who made terrible decisions toward the end of an otherwise stellar career.  While some of his last works were marred by plagiarism, inaccuracy, and carelessness, no responsible historian has made that accusation of the rest of his work, which is where the quote obtains.  Ambrose's "Rise to Globalism" continues to be the standard 200-300 level college text on U.S. Foreign Policy, and his biography of Nixon is also one of the best.

RWM

[Anonymous]

henry6

The problem is not democracy but human behavior.

What's wrong with human behavior?

[henry6]

Railway Man

 

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/killbill.cfm

After you read this, you might be like me and wonder if democracy is such a great idea after all!

RWM

 

Nothing in there I hadn't surmised especially in view of Eisenhower's admonisment of not trusting the industrial-military complex and his advisors warning of gas crisies and supply shortages of petroleum. But where I do have a problem with the piece is that he quotes Stephen Ambrose who is noted for plagurisms and other self inspirations. The other problem is that the piece was altered in 12/08 according to a note at the bottom but does not explain what was changed and why.  Churchill's quote about democracy is good and accurate.  The problem is not democracy but human behavior.

 

[jchnhtfd]

Seems to me that Railwayman and Mudchicken -- both of whom are incredibly well placed to know! -- mentioned the really key point to the longevity and (to an engineer, at least) the real beauty of much of the railway engineering work of 100+ years ago: 99% of the art of good engineering -- in almost any field -- is a combination of good practical common sense and the ability and willingness to learn from experience. As MC noted, most of the engineering we do, even today, can be done without the benefit of all the modern computer bells and whistles (though I'll bet the old time location engineers would drool over aerial and space-based mapping!). Indeed, as MC noted, sometimes the bells and whistles don't do as good a job. A really good engineer, IMHO, can look at something and get a pretty good feel for whether it is 'right' or not. The bells and whistles do help a lot in the dog work of calculating, it's true. And they can help you pare your design down so that it is closer to your desired safety factor throughout (anyone remember the deacon's wonderful one horse shay). But you can't beat a good, experienced, old head... and they had them, back them (still do, thank goodness, and some of them are on this forum!)

[Paul_D_North_Jr]

Railway Man

[snip] There were some big mistakes before that time, such as blowing the entire budget for construction of a railway on a single big stone structure instead of choosing an alignment that didn't require such a monument to engineering stupidity, but not too many afterward -- at least not on the well-run roads. 

Being a certified sourpuss, when I see a large, old stone railroad bridge in the U.S., while I acknowledge the engineering and construction accomplishment of the structure, its tempered by my dislike of the engineering incompetence and ego, the former for failing to find a more economical alternative alignment that lived within the economic need of the time, the latter for the presumption that engineering was more important than the client's checkbook.

RWM

Some random thoughts on this thread:

1)  Re the above - wasn't it Edward H. Harriman who said that he was "tired of building/ paying for monuments to engineers !" ?

2)  See William D. Middleton's "Landmarks of [on ?] the Iron Road, hardbound, Indiana University Press, within the last 5 years or so.  A very good analysis on the early stone structures, with a little on alignments.

3)  On locating engineers, I've not seen a better exposition for the layman than in John Stover's The History of American Railroads (hardbound, 1940's or 1950's, I think - my copy is still in a box someplace).  He has a whole chapter on that, largely written around the experiences of one Edward Gillette, who as I recall did a lot of locating for the Burlington / CB&Q.

4)  On RWM's comments:  Wasn't it Al Perlman - as quoted by David P. Morgan - who had an expression about "beautiful theories or beliefs being murdered by a gang of brutal facts" (or similar) ?

5)  This thread and your comments are just great !  There's a ton of wisdom and insight here, and opportunity for reflection, for those of us who work in the never-never land between the public and private sectors, which is where all railroads live anyway. 

- Paul North.

[tree68]

The NYS Thruway is a toll road.   At one time the plan was that the tolls were supposed to be dropped, probably when construction had been paid off.

They just raised the tolls again.

Many parts of the Thruway ran parallel to the old West Shore.

[Modelcar]

greyhounds

I'm of the conviction that the Interstates should have been toll roads from the get go.

 

The Pennsylvania Turnpike, now almost 70 years old was {and is}, financed by tolls.  It seems to have been a very useful success as a system and thru updating the tolls to the need, they have updated the structure throughout it's many years.  Tolls now are roughly {for automobiles, don't know about trucks}, 7 times what they were at it's opening in Oct. 1940.

{Trivia RR data}....Route roughly follows the 1885 South Penn RR R of W that was never quite finished.

[greyhounds]

I do not have the time to read the entire link right now, but I will do so.  It's interesting that the Bush and Gore families were political oponents in the 1950's.  I'm sure it will be very enlightening.  I'm of the conviction that the Interstates should have been toll roads from the get go.

As to RWM's doubts about democracy,  Churchill provides a good quote.  I'll remember it as best I can.

"Democracy is a very bad form of government, but all the others are so much worse." 

 Being from Illinois I know representative government isn't pretty or efficient or even very honest.  But there's nothing better to replace it with.

 

[Railway Man]

henry6

I think expediency was a later developement than need.  Need was the 1830 to 1850 era work, then came the expediency of  "railroad fever" which finally petered out in the early 1900's replaced by rededication to need because of higher traffic demands and heavier equipment.  It was probably also geographical...need in the east at the beginning, expediencey through the midwest to the coast during expansion;  but the second "need" era was universal.  And like our CCC and Eisenhower Highway system, first roads were built based on limited knowledge of future size of equipment which lead to constant repair and rebuilding exercises.

 

Your last sentence caught my attention.  It's conventional wisdom, it seems sensible, but unfortunately it's not what happened.  I would be fine if all we had done in this country is fail to anticipate the future.  What we actually did is willfully screw up the future in the name of political ideology, and to grasp for short-term individual economic gain.  I'm beginning to think that while in theory we all think democracy is a wonderful idea, in practice we are almost never able to make the wise, shared-sacrifice decisions that a democracy requires.

I know hardly anyone wants to take the time to click through and read links, or go into the details but, truly, the devil really does live in the details, and please read the link below.  Why?  Because there was no accidental or excusable failure to antipate the future in the Interstate Highway Act.  Everyone involved knew precisely what would happen.  The only people who imagined it would all work out in the future nicely were members of the public who think that as long as you have an ideology you believe in, the details will all fall in place.  Instead, there was a cynical decision made by everyone in the know to build an Interstate Highway System that everyone knew would crumble, and an ignorant decision made by those not kn the know to believe that their elected representatives, industry and union leaders, and trade association leaders would act in the best interest of the country.

Everyone in the transportation business, Congress, and the lobbying circles knew then how heavy trucks could be.  And trucks with the axle loadings that we have today had already been in widespread use by 1950.  But despite that knowledge, the Eisenhower Highway System, better known as the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, intentionally chose to undersize pavement thickness and bridge strength resulting in the failure of the pavement and bridges in short order on a great swath of the system.  This decision which in hindsight seems unfathomably stupid happened because while everyone thought Interstate highways were a wonderful idea (even the railroad lobby!), no one wanted to be responsible for paying for them:

1. Rich states did not want to transfer money to poor states
2. Populated states did not want to transfer money to unpopulated states
3. The Republican party did not want a new tax
4. The Democratic party did not want new debt
5. The oil industry did not want a fuel tax
6. The rubber industry did not want a tire tax
   
7. The railroads did not want to be taxed for highways
8. The truckers did not want to pay for anything whatsoever
   
9. The AAA did not want auto drivers to be paying for the thick pavement that trucks needed but cars didn't
10. The states and their highway departments did not want to be left holding the bag for building and maintaining highways that primarily benefited other states (pass-through trucking)

The poisionous compromise worked out was that the Federal Act would pay for only the minimum possible pavement thickness for the best possible soils.  But the best possible soils do not exist in most of the nation!  Instead, Congress, its decision-making the usual realpolitik mess of party ideology, lobbying money, and thousands of tangential concerns, decided that thicker pavement and stronger bridges were a maintenance issue and maintenance should be the problem of individual states, not the Federal Goverment.  So it only paid for the thinnest possible pavement and the cheapest possible bridges, condemning the system to premature failure and wasting most of the money spent on pavement, bridges, and subgrade preparation.

Of all places, on the FHWA website, there is an excellent history of the sausage factory, I mean Washington decision-making process that led to the creation of the Interstate Highway attention.  Read particularly, please, the parts where the railroad lobby is discussed, because (to my surprise) the railroad lobby actually was correct.

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/killbill.cfm

After you read this, you might be like me and wonder if democracy is such a great idea after all!

RWM

[Railway Man]

Kevin C. Smith

Railway Man

Once a decision was made for stone, the cost differential between engineering and constructing for the minimum-possible stone structure and something that was bulletproof was virtually nil.

RWM

There are a couple of stone culverts left from the original RR (Saint Paul & Eastern Grand Trunk, later part of the Milwaukee, Lake Shore & Western and finally the C&NW) grade through my hometown. Both were abandoned 60-70 years ago. One is at the bottom of a 20 foot embankment and the other is still in place for access between a couple of farm fields. At the time the line was constructed (1880-84, I believe) this was still pretty big lumber territory so they passed up a lot of readily available timber to quarry out the stonework. Oddly enough, a couple of larger bridges constructed later (1900-1906) were either timber (or timber approaches) until replaced with steel plate girders on concrete abutments.

 

Kevin:  The large bridges you describe are a different case than the bridges about which Murphy posed his original question, which is what I was answering.  Stone-faced arch bridges in the 1860-1910 period reached an upper practical economic limit as their size grew, usually once the bridge was more than two spans of 20' feet each, or a total embankment height of 25-30 feet above stream bed.  Beyond that size, either the cost of the embankment, or the cost of the stonework, both became prohibitive.  The earthwork cost became prohibitive because as you know the width of the embankment increases at something like 4x the rate of the height.  The travel distance to obtain all that earth with animal- or man-drawn scrapers becomes too far. Similarly with stone, once beyond about a 20' height the cost to lift stone becomes very high because it reaches beyond a simple stiff-leg derrick powered by animal or man, and the quantity of stone exceeds what can be obtained in the immediate vicinity. 

Beyond that limit, then timber even with its high maintenance costs becomes more economical, or iron or later steel bridges.  

The economic rules of thumb for the choices of bridge design, type, and material were well-understood by railways by the time of the Civil War.  There were some big mistakes before that time, such as blowing the entire budget for construction of a railway on a single big stone structure instead of choosing an alignment that didn't require such a monument to engineering stupidity, but not too many afterward -- at least not on the well-run roads. 

Being a certified sourpuss, when I see a large, old stone railroad bridge in the U.S., while I acknowledge the engineering and construction accomplishment of the structure, its tempered by my dislike of the engineering incompetence and ego, the former for failing to find a more economical alternative alignment that lived within the economic need of the time, the latter for the presumption that engineering was more important than the client's checkbook.

RWM

[henry6]

I think expediency was a later developement than need.  Need was the 1830 to 1850 era work, then came the expediency of  "railroad fever" which finally petered out in the early 1900's replaced by rededication to need because of higher traffic demands and heavier equipment.  It was probably also geographical...need in the east at the beginning, expediencey through the midwest to the coast during expansion;  but the second "need" era was universal.  And like our CCC and Eisenhower Highway system, first roads were built based on limited knowledge of future size of equipment which lead to constant repair and rebuilding exercises.

[Kevin C. Smith]

Railway Man

Once a decision was made for stone, the cost differential between engineering and constructing for the minimum-possible stone structure and something that was bulletproof was virtually nil.

RWM

There are a couple of stone culverts left from the original RR (Saint Paul & Eastern Grand Trunk, later part of the Milwaukee, Lake Shore & Western and finally the C&NW) grade through my hometown. Both were abandoned 60-70 years ago. One is at the bottom of a 20 foot embankment and the other is still in place for access between a couple of farm fields. At the time the line was constructed (1880-84, I believe) this was still pretty big lumber territory so they passed up a lot of readily available timber to quarry out the stonework. Oddly enough, a couple of larger bridges constructed later (1900-1906) were either timber (or timber approaches) until replaced with steel plate girders on concrete abutments.

[BaltACD]

Lest we forget....Railroad Engineering, on both the Civil & Mechanical aspects was the Rocket Science and Brain Surgery of the day and attracted the best and brightest of the available people.  That is not in any way to demean what those men accomplished with the materials they had to work with. 

When you needed earth moved....hire 1000 Irishmen with picks and shovels, get 100 carts and 100 mules to move the carts any you had your state of the art Earthmover.

Drilling for your black powder explosive shots....hire 1000 Germans with sledge hammers and hand held star drill bits and you had your Jackleg drilling machines (if one of them was named Jack.)

The 19th Century engineering accomplishments are amazing when viewed from a 21st Century perspective.

[Anonymous]

It seems to me that railroad size and speed development temporarily outpaced the adequacy of the track, bridges, and safety measures in the pioneering era, which resulted in a bewildering variety and quantity of accidents and failures.  However, I would not attribute that to a deficiency in engineering ability.  In reading the Railroad Gazette from that period, I am struck by just how engineering-intense the railroad industry was in that otherwise seemingly primitive era.

[samfp1943]

To pose another position; the early railroad construction IMHO was built in a race for expediency. To construct a railline; to go from point A to B, first, to prove it could be done, and secondly garner the rewards of more and better funding., To capturing the travelers, and freight between those two points. With labor back then as cheap, and somewhat available as it apparently was; with the loadings fairly light. 

   The requirements of the types of cars and locomotives, being fairly forgiving of the 'fast and dirty' laid track. The first idea was to make the mosr money and then improve the structure as traffic demanded, serviceability and not longevity was the apparent goal.  Only after a line could prove its ability to earn for its company did the strengthening and overbuilding take place.  

[diningcar]

There were some wonderful locating engineers in the 19th century, Tehachipi for example. But we must understand the conditions placed upon them by their bosses  (money persons). Funds were short and the need to have 800 miles of RR built in XXX months was the major criteria. So the most economical construction was usually what was engineered and it could be fixed later if the RR was successful.

But the locations they chose were for the most part the best to get from A to B. The curviture and grades were where the money must be conserved. We who have later worked at bettering those situations can attest that they did a great job given the financial constraints and the limits of construction capabilities they faced. Also, the revenue which early RR's needed to succeed was found from different sources than today, so you built where the revenue source was. 

Remember that a location may be chosen because that was where water and timber could be ecomomically acquired. Or it was chosen because established local  businesses gave money or property to have the RR come their way and the engineer did what his boss said to do, just as they do today.

I have great admiration for those early RR engineers. Other than relatively short " line changes" we are still using the locations they chose.

.

[henry6]

Starrucca Viaduct was opened in1848 for the Erie's double track 6ft guage..

But the point made here are well taken...I have been driving between North Jersey to the Southern Tier of New York since April of 1961...there isn't a highway, main road, or back road yielding a 2 and a half hour trip to 12 or more hours of driving that I havent' done.  And I am constantly amazed at the work of the engineers who built the railroads and canals up and over and through the Pocono Mountains back in the 1830's and 40's!  Roebling's feat of taking the D&H Canal across the Lackawaxen and Delaware Rivers and the bridges, viaducts, and tunnels of the Erie, Lehigh Valley, Lackawanna, CNJ and thier predecessors from 1830 well into the 20th Century are stunning even today.

[mudchicken]

You answered your own question. (and then there is evolving science and pure dumb luck)

[Murphy Siding]

Railway Man

mudchicken

Some structures were horribly overbuilt, but others you seem to have forgotten about didn't survive the first train. The narrow gage experience showed this plenty of times. The understanding of structures/statics and materials science + metalurgy had not yet been fully developed.

Amen.  We are fools if we look at history only for confirmation of our cherished beliefs of today.

RWM

That holds true in my industry as well.  "They don't build house like they used to."  The over-built ones are still standing strong.  The under-built ones....fell down.  Was the engineering of the late 19th century based on experience, or seat of the pants?

   

[richg1998]

 Google books as a lot of books, some online downloadable on railroad practices of the 1800s and early 1900s.

http://books.google.com/books?q=stone+arch+bridges&btnG=Search+Books

http://books.google.com/books?q=Starrucca+Viaduct&btnG=Search+Books

Try searching for car heating, locomotive electric lights, railroad construction, railroad bridges, railroad cranes, etc.

Rich