The other day in my travels, I ran accross the abandonded right of way of a Rock Island line that has been gone for 30+ years. It was probably put in around the late 1880's(?) The line climbed from the Big Sioux River at the Iowa / South Dakota border, to the flat farmland a half dozen miles west. It follows a small creek in a reletively wide valley. At one point the line is cut into a hill for about a hundred yards. The result looks something like a tunnel that has been daylighted, with a steep hill on each side of the line. Had the line been built around that pile of dirt rather than through, it would have been a little longer, and have a only little more of a curve in it. I'm trying to grasp why they went to the extra work. Mountain grades, I'm sure, had their own set of criteria for layout. Out on the prairies, if the line wasn't flat as a pancake or straight as an arrow, which was given more priority- reducing grade or keeping curvature in line?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Many times the route gets determined by what property can be obtained. Sometimes the prefrered route can't be built because the property upon which it is to be built can not be obtained (at least not at price the builders are willing to pay).
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
You can bet they took the cheapest course.
Hmmm. Whether they built the line through the dirt hill, or skirted the dirt hill, it probably would have come from the same landowner. As I see it. it would have cost less money to go around the dirt hill. Would keeping an alignment straighter be an important consideration on a somewhat gentle grade?
Is it possible that the cut was a realignment made years after the original construction? Something done when the development of earth moving equipment made such work practical.
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I doubt any of us can answer or analyze this specific location without viewing the location on the ground or having a topo map with sufficient defination. Most locating engineers were very good at selecting locations using the bigger picture. A short segment should not be analyzed without looking at the nearby features.
The following, and other factors, may have affected this location being chosen:
If it was constructed at a time when mules and horses pulled the earthmoving equipment and nearby fill material was needed then excavation of a hillside could provide the source.
Concern for high water, either in the stream being followed or side drainage that must be crossed with sufficient head room to avoid a washout.
Instability of the soil on the alternate location, ie, swampy or subject to quicksand.
Check the history(ies) of the railroad(s) in question. Local history might reveal a realignement. That mound of dirt might well be a mound created by the digging of the cut...but whether it was during the initial construction or a later realignment, only history books, maps, and research will tell. The earlier the railroad was built, the more likely it was built to avoid grades via longer distances, the newer the more likely it would either take a grade because of heavier, stornger locomotives or bore through a mountain or dig a cut.. ROW's also took the cheapest route...if rights not sold to them, then they built around the blocked property...even whole towns were missed when another town offered free or made availabe bonding and rights of way. Each stretch of track has an interesting and different history.
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Then there is an anecdote about Isambard Kingdom Brunel who supposedly, in the building of the Great Western Railway (England) deliberately aligned the railway so that a tunnel would have to be built (near Chippenham) at one point (instead of a shorter route that would include a bridge). The "Box Tunnel" (at the time the longest tunnel in the world) is oriented such that the sun shines all the way through the length of the tunnel on his birthday (April 9).
The story goes that the investors tried to get him to take the shorter route, but he convinced them that the bridge would be more expensive than the tunnel and the longer route.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
Murphy Siding The line climbed from the Big Sioux River at the Iowa / South Dakota border, to the flat farmland a half dozen miles west. It follows a small creek in a reletively wide valley. At one point the line is cut into a hill for about a hundred yards. The result looks something like a tunnel that has been daylighted, with a steep hill on each side of the line.
The line climbed from the Big Sioux River at the Iowa / South Dakota border, to the flat farmland a half dozen miles west. It follows a small creek in a reletively wide valley. At one point the line is cut into a hill for about a hundred yards. The result looks something like a tunnel that has been daylighted, with a steep hill on each side of the line.
The cut located about 1/2 mile west of the tunnel on the Oakland, Antioch & Eastern (later Sacramento Northern) looked pretty much the same as the one you described. Earth moving logistics at that time didn't require a lot of width, so there was little need to take out the earth on the downhill side of the cut. With modern earth-moving hardware, the extra road width acquired by taking out the downhill side of the cut could pay for the extra cost in operational saving during excavation.
One likely reason for making the cut was to avoid an overly sharp curve.
- Erik
In addition to the other reasons above:
If the alignment had gone around the hill, it likely would have been 'side-hill' type grading - cut a triangle-shaped wedge out of the high or hill side, and carry it across the roadbed and dump it on the low side to build it up there.
But possibly poor soil conditions, and/ or the lack of good fill compaction equipment 'back in the day', would have made the embankment susceptible to settling and/ or sliding further down the hill. Both of those problems would have been avoided with the cut that was selected.
Finally, is the creek side of that hill susceptible to erosion or flooding ? Again, a potential problem that the cut avoids.
- Paul North.
Threads like this are interesting. I tried to find this ROW on Google, but the Rock Island had a line from Iowa that ended at Sioux Falls, and another line that entered SD from MN at Ward, and went north/northwest to Watertown. Where exactly is the location?
It's the line from Rock Rapids, Iowa west to Sioux Falls. S.D. If you follow the line west from Rock Rapids, it crosses the Big Sioux River into South Dakota just west of Granite, Iowa- if Granite is still on maps. From there, it follows a creek west. The old line crosses a paved county highway at the northwest corner of the Spring Creek Golf Course. That may be Spring Creek that the line follows(?) Where I saw the spot in question would be either one or two miles west of this county highway, on a gravel county road. The spot wouild be southwest of the place where the gravel road crosses the old r.o.w.
I think I have found the location where the old line crosses the gravel road.
See: 43°27'50.31" N 96°37'45.19" W on Google Earth.
The hill that had the northern end slashed to put the RR though is immediately west of there. You may have to zoom in and out at that coordinate to get a feel for where the old ROW is. It shows simply as a slightly lighter line banded by a darker edge (compressed ground where the track was reduces the amount of vegetation that grows on it, and the darker edges are to the side where the ground is not so compacted so vegetation is a bit taller.
West of that hill is another pair of slightly higher hills with the creekbed between them in a wiggley line that is somewhat N/S. Moving the ROW to the south would have meant a deeper slash or a tunnel in the first hill to get to that valley to the west. Or, if moved north of the small slashed hill it would have to go over the bigger hill to get to the creek on it's northwest side. If it went even farther north to follow the creek around the north hill (following the creek) there is yet another hill northwest of the creek to go over. Trying to follow the creek would have made a very sharp (probably unacceptably sharp) curve to follow the creek to get back south of that hill.
If you zoom in to the point where it enters the Ground Level view and you can somewhat make out the cut. If you work at it you can get the view to follow the old ROW to see a bit of what the topology is like. I followed the creek and it is a difficult curve and that hill to the northwest is higher and wider than the one that had the cut in it.
Ding! ding! ding! I think we have a winner. Now that I look at an aerial map view, your theory makes perfect sense. From the gravel road looking east, I figured the cree simply headed towards the west, and the rail line hugged the south side of the little valley. Factor in the turn of the creek, and the bridge to get the tracks to the other bank, and it's apparant why the line was cut into the hill.Cool!
this problem is resolved to my sarisfaction, but thre's another reason to create a seemingly useless cut. for years i puzzled why a straight,flat stretch of int. 5 north of portland OR went right through a rocky knob when the dountry all around was dead flat. then itstruck me - they needed the rock for construction purposes! after all, 'blacktop' AC pavement is 93% gravel, with several feet of crushed stonebase course under that. -arturo
Murphy:
Built 1886 by Burlington Cedar Rapids & Northern (using Cedar Rapids, Iowa Falls & Northwestern RR survey)....always a branchline - the other line via Worthington, Minnesota was the main line. I have the GLO Filing map for the Iowa side. The Rock Island got this part and CB&Q got parts in eastern Iowa circa 1902.
Abandoned Rock Falls to Sioux City in 1970 (32 miles)
Wellington's 1880's textbook is still considered by many as the best "how-to" build a railroad manual ever devised.
That part of the world has some high organic topsoil 8-12 feet deep, great for farmers but lousy for railroad foundations. Probably a consideration.
MC- I'd say Burlington got the better deal. That end of Iowa had/has a bigger population density. I wonder if BNSF still operates over that portion? I'm guessing that the 1980 abandonment was the line into Sioux Falls, S.D., not that other Sioux Somebody. I can attest to the high organic topsoil. My office is on the edge of a small town. 100 feet out my window is corn that is 9' tall. (I know it's 9', because we're lumber guys, and we like using our tape measures.) What is the full name of the Wellington book? Would it be interseting to a non-surveyer?
Sorry about the misnomer....
About A.M. Wellington & Wellington's book: http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/wellingt.htm (not overtly technical)
In Iowa currently, considerably more of the CRIP survives than what CB&Q got of the former BCR&N in 1903... And most of that is UP now in NW Iowa. BN abandoned most of the CB&Q holdings, but CB&Q dumped a bunch between 1957 and 1970.
Available free in Google Books,
http://books.google.com/books/download/The_economic_theory_of_the_location_of_r.pdf?id=3HTsgr1-WPwC&hl=en&capid=AFLRE72vPZz1ctIImGDwO-3KfobKBm0rxpkfQQ1rAGToONG2w2JcaJIt5-qM9ODawir0F6RNlRJWDArb_xHNIP21ESdrDKxhSQ&continue=http://books.google.com/books/download/The_economic_theory_of_the_location_of_r.pdf%3Fid%3D3HTsgr1-WPwC%26output%3Dpdf%26hl%3Den
The Estherville to Sioux Falls line was considered a main line by the RI. At least that's what the employee time tables say into the 1950s. By sometime in the 1960s, it was the Sioux Falls branch.
The line thru tWorthington was called the Worthington Branch. "Iron Road to Empire" a history of the RI written for the RI's centennial mentions the "main line to Watertown." The ETTs and 1913 train sheet I have alway call it the Watertown Branch.
From a Dakota Division Dispatcher's trainsheet, on June 25, 1913 Sioux Falls had two passenger trains in/out and two freight trains in/out. An extra from Estherville operated as far as Ellsworth, MN (jct with the Watertown branch) and turned back to Estherville. Freight train sizes were in the 8 to 12 car range that day. Other items noted on the sheet, one of the freight trains stalled and had to back into Estherville. A bad electrical storm was reported by the Ellsworth operator.
Jeff
Which BCR&N lines did the CB&Q obtain in 1902? I have an old BCR&N map, and it appears all of it was folded into the Rock Island. Regarding the acquisition, W.E. Hayes stated on page 164 of Iron Road to Empire:
"The next big story was the announcement on June 1, 1902, that the Rock Island had taken over the now 1,289 miles of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern under a 999-year lease. The Rock Island had long owned that company's controlling stock, but now it would be operated as part of the Rock Island system. Of the increased Rock Island shares, 33,812 were set aside to exchange share for share with holders of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids and Northern stock still outstanding. Through this deal the Rock Island gained entrance into Minnesota and entered into arrangements with the Milwaukee to get into St. Paul and Minneapolis - a through service which was destined to become a reality in November of that year."
At a more "nuts & bolts" level (or should I say "stakes and tacks" ? ) without the economics, much shorter, and more local to the subject of this thread, is the book referenced below, which can be hard to find:
"Locating the Iron Trail" by Edward Gillette. See:
http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com/gillette2.html - "According to Hubbard, Gillette was well respected by the Indians who referred to Gillette's private car as a "big tipi on wheels." "
http://www.worldcat.org/title/locating-the-iron-trail/oclc/01509276
http://openlibrary.org/works/OL7768541W/Locating_the_iron_trail
http://www.amazon.com/Locating-Iron-Trail-Edward-Gillette/dp/B0000D5KG7
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