Somewhere around 1880, a predecessr of the Great Northern built a bridge the Big Sioux River, in Sioux Falls, S.D. It crossed over the top of part of the namesake falls, at a particularly wide spot. The west bank has a long area of built up ROW, to make a smooth transition up the hill of the river valley. In addition, the bridge and the built up ROW are laid out on a curve. Before computers, calculators, satelites, etc... how did they lay this out and build it to the proper proportions?
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Wye Level or Dumpy Level, Vernier Transit, chain, math tables, log tables and possibly a nomograph slide rule.
Horse power, steam power & a lot of enginuity.
Some of these guys would embarrass the h*ll out of some of today's engineers.
(I have a Brass 1873 Gurley Engineer's Transit in my living room, next to BossHen's loom to remind me.)
They were called civil engineers. They learned math, algebra, etcetera. The did thier own computations and took the time it took to make it happen. Mudchicken listed the mechanical things...but most of all they were men with heads containing brains which did the work. In other words, you do the math and you've done the work. So, go figure.
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In a case like this, where the west bank of the river would start with a 20' high, built up ROW, I have a hard time visualizing how this would progress. Would they mark the centerline of the ROW, then build up the elevation, correcting as they went up, or were they that acurate in the 3 dimensions to start with?
Don't forget the "plane table" instruments for mapping, field books and hard-lead pencils, vellum (high-grade tracing paper) and ruling pens for the topographic mapping and cross-section sheets, and lots of calculation paper and good old-fashioned 'number-crunching" - governed by years of hard-won experience, revealed wisdom, insight, artistry of a sort, and not a little simple genius. Remember, it was indeed the 'rocket science' of that day and age.
In response to Murphy's most recent question: It's a interactive or "trial-and-error" process (Lord, how I dislike that expression - it ought to be "trial-and-adjust" instead) that finds, collects, and analyzes all the data, and finds the perceived optimum solution at the time in detail on paper first. That's much, much cheaper and faster than doing it with earth, iron, and concrete in the field at the site, and possible having to undo or redo some of it later on.
In brief, the process is:
1) Reconnaissance (sp?), a very quick and brief overview of the area to select the best location for the river crossing (expensive at best), and one or more likely good routes on either side of it. Not much detail yet - just "up that valley" or "then through that ridge someplace" - done from horseback, by eye, or with a barometer or handheld sighting level for rough elevations to within 100 ft. or so (kind of like a sextant on a ship) [mudchicken and maybe a few others know I'm using the wrong terminology here, but the right name wouldn't mean anything to most readers].
2) Preliminary route location survey - just rough connecting of survey points at intervals of maybe 1,000 ft. apart, and elevations to within a foot or so at each one. This is to refine the recon survey, and enable choosing the best overall route - e.g., "This route is 5 miles longer thatn the other one, but the summit would be 500 ft. lower, though it would also need a deep cut or a tunnel instead", etc.
3) Detailed or final route locating survey - thorough mapping of the selected route, calculating the curves and grades to the nearest 0.1 ft. (1-1/4" approx.) or 0.01 ft. (1/8 inch approx.) setting centerline stakes at 100 ft. max. intervals, and stakes on each side at the tops and bottoms of the cuts and fills. At this time the exact height of your 20 ft. fill would be known at every 100 ft. "engineering or surveying station" at least. By next applying the railroad's standard earthwork 'template' prism-like shape, then the width at the top, the angle of the side slopes, and hence the width at the bottom, as well as the cross-section area, would all be known or calculated at those same stations.
4) Construction stakeout - unless the change in grade is small (typ. 3 ft. or less), the original centerline and most other stakes will be dug up or buried a few times over, esp. as your 20 ft. fill is mounded up. Typically the contractor's surveyors will keep setting new stakes as the fill gets higher - as well as for the abutments and other key points of the bridge - so that there's always a handy reference point for measuring from for the actual construction folks. When they're done, the fill will be within 0.1 ft. or so of the design elevation, and pretty close to the theoretical prism shape - the railroad's surveyors will measure it and check to make sure before the payment amount is calculated and approved.
This is a just a 'cocktail-party' level summary - multiple books have been written about the whole process. One of the better popular treatments is the chapter about locating engineer Edward Gillette in the 1947 book "The Story of American Railroads" by Stewart Holbrook - see: http://www.amazon.com/Story-American-Railroads-Stewart-Holbrook/dp/B0007DF2DA
- Paul North.
It was not that long ago, 1959-1960, when Santa Fe built the 44 mile Transcon line change in Arizona. I was one of the engineering party chiefs and we also used transits and levels albeit an upgrade from those mudchicken describes. We also used a 100 foot steel chain and did all of our computations on paper in the field with sine - cosine - tangent - cotangent tables to seconds and to eight decimal places. We built with cuts and fills in excess of 100 feet and through volcanic rock. We built it with maximum grades of 1% and curves no greater than one degree - and the one degree curves had 570 foot spirals. We had to improvise frequently to deal with unusual circumstances but todays Transcon would not be what it is without this major line change.
Yes I would do it all again, Just restore my 27 year old body. It was exhilarating and those of us still left to talk about it do so at every opportunity.
Reading about railroad construction in the 19th century will cause you to realize that the great unsung heros of the effort were the civil engineers.
Think of a tunnel. (I've been reading a lot recently on the consruction of the 1st US transcon.)
The CP building east from Sacramento had to dig several tunnels in the Sirerra Nevada mountains. They had no power tools, such as steam drills. They had no dynamite. The did, eventually, get to use some nitroglycerine. (It was created on site after a couple of unfortunate shipping incidents.) Basically they drilled by hand and blasted with black powder.
Inside the tunnel the only light available was from candles and tourches. Maybe they had some whale oil lamps. Kerosene wasn't a big seller yet.
The tunnels were drilled from both ends as time was important. The civil engieers had a problem in three dimensions. The two bore holes had to meet flush on, sometimes on a curve.
Those CEs would bring those two bores together within two inches of being square on. I'd like to meet the man or woman who, working under those conditions, could do that today. And remember, those guys in the 1860s didn't have MS degrees from engineering schools. They might have had some education in surveying, but basically everything else they knew they had picked up on their own.
We like to think of our ancestors as primitive, but that is just arrogance. People 100 or even 1,000 years ago were just as intelligent as we are today, they just didn't have the advantage of spending the first 20 years of their lives in schools. Sir Isaac Newton said, "If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
Knowledge and technology advance because each generation has the advantage of starting where the previous generation left off instead of at the beginning. The things that forward thinking people spent a lifetime learning by trial and error are passed on to students today in a semester.
The definition of a recession is when the economy gets so bad that you are forced to do without things that your grandparents never dreamed of having.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
ndbprrThe Incas had tolerences thatcan not be achieved today and nobody can figure out how they did it.
Aliens. Or so some people say...
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
diningcar- Can you give some examples of improvising? It sounds like your tools weren't a whole lot more hightech than 100 years before. When I took surveying in college, in 1980, we learned with a steel tape and a transit. The electronic age couldn't have come much later.
When I was in USAF tech school, we had one "block" that was heavy on calculations. The students fell loosely into three groups - pencil and paper, slide rule, and the new-fangled calculators (which at the time were still limited to add, subtract, multiply, and divide).
As a rule, the pencil and paper crowd finished calculations before anyone else...
Our police accident reconstruction folks now use GPS and laser based tools to plot a scene. One sets up with a high-tech transit whilst one or two others walk around the scene with mirror posts hitting points of interest. They later go back and connect the dots for an uber-accurate picture of the layout. I'm sure they've borrowed the tools from the surveying industry (figuratively speaking).
of strings, measuring tapes, plumb bobs and folding rules..............
tree68 When I was in USAF tech school, we had one "block" that was heavy on calculations. The students fell loosely into three groups - pencil and paper, slide rule, and the new-fangled calculators (which at the time were still limited to add, subtract, multiply, and divide). As a rule, the pencil and paper crowd finished calculations before anyone else... Our police accident reconstruction folks now use GPS and laser based tools to plot a scene. One sets up with a high-tech transit whilst one or two others walk around the scene with mirror posts hitting points of interest. They later go back and connect the dots for an uber-accurate picture of the layout. I'm sure they've borrowed the tools from the surveying industry (figuratively speaking).
I have appreciated these comments concerning the use of various tools, especially the comments from Paul North, who (as I recall from a post of his a few years ago) was the last student in his school to use a slide rule when taking a test. I still have my K&E slide rule that I used in college (one of my friends had one twice as long (he carried in a case somewhat like a scabbard for a short sword); I think it could be read to four significant figures.
When I was taking quantitative analysis, I used logarithms to four decimal places for my calculations. I had to write all of the calculations down in my lab book; now I would simpply write the equation and the answer down.
Johnny
diningcar Murphy, so many little things, but I will first say that this 44 miles of new construction was begun in September 1959 and the first revenue train ran on December 19, 1960. That is fifteen and 1/2 months from breaking ground to having a double track CTC railroad in operation.
In that period of time today you wouldn't even have the environmental impact and engineering studies done yet.
Sure you aren't talking about the general civil contractor and not the engineer? (big difference)
Just to add a bit...
Reading all the comments reminds me of why so many military men went into railroading in the early years. The Military Academy at West Point was one of the few schools, if not the only school turning out trained engineers. Other engineers learned through apprenticeship, but if you had a West Pointer available you knew you had some one special.
Interesting speculation here: Robert E. Lee was an engineer, second in the Class of 1829 at West Point. He could have left the Army anytime after say, 1840 and walked right into a railroad job. Imagine how different American history would have been had he done so.
Firelock76 Interesting speculation here: Robert E. Lee was an engineer, second in the Class of 1829 at West Point. He could have left the Army anytime after say, 1840 and walked right into a railroad job. Imagine how different American history would have been had he done so.
Robert E. Lee, among other things, was busy building levees, locks and dams along the lower Mississippi, from St. Louis south, prior to the Civil War. (and he was *** good at it)
ndbprrThe Egyptions and Incas did things that are amazing. The Incas had tolerences thatcan not be achieved today and nobody can figure out how they did it.
....Interesting conversation. Was looking for someone to mention the "round" slide rule.
Trivia: I have a foot long slide rule here in my home office...from years ago.
It even was made in the USA."Pickett" brand. Model: N902-ES
Quentin
Quentin, thanks for mentioning the circular slide rule. I used one eight inches in diameter in the field. It was exceptionally accurate and speedy for establishing the transit vernier deflections when staking spirals. The cube scale was used since the Santa Fe spirals are cubic parabolas.
You could get a deflection to any point on the spiral like to station 52 + 41.56. In the mountains it was not practical to use the easy ten-point spiral deflection. We set the deflection to whatever location made the most sense at that time. Because of long spiral lenghts (570 feet for one degree curves) we also had to move the transit up to some convinient point on the spiral so that the remainder could be established. This we called 'breaking the back of a spiral' and it was somewhat complicated but necessary in mountain construction. Again interesting times, but only for young men!!!
I get the joke Fred, but I suspect the South might have lost it sooner! By the way, if the South had 7-11's and pickup trucks in the 1860's they just might have won anyway!
You realize what the name for the parent company that owns 7/11 is...
Southland.
23 17 46 11
Firelock76 I get the joke Fred, but I suspect the South might have lost it sooner! By the way, if the South had 7-11's and pickup trucks in the 1860's they just might have won anyway!
You may be interested in Rails to Oblivion: The Decline of Confederate Railroads in the Civil War by Christopher R. Gabel of the the Defense Studies Institute. Here is a link:
http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/gabel6.pdf
Dr. Gabel believes the Confederacy had sufficient railroads to meet its needs but it failed to use them well. At the beginning of the war the Confederate States had about 9,000 miles of railroad compared to 23,000 in the rest of the country. Considering the area and the fact that the Confederacy was mostly agricultural they had enough. It is true that rail lines were often disconnected and gauges varied but that was also true in the North. While what Dr. Gabel writes is historical revisionism his research is solid and I find him persuasive.
As far as I know Robert E. Lee never applied his engineering talents to railroads either before of after the war.
No, General Lee was never involved in railroad building, except for strongly recommending a railroad line up the James River from Richmond to Lexington during his time as president of Washington College. Eventually one was built by the C&O but years after Lee had died.
I haven't read Dr. Gabels book, as a matter of fact this is the first I've heard of it, but in my studies the main problem the Confederates had with supply had to do with administration and distribution. It seems that when the war started the South had all the best combat commanders while the North had the best administrators. Throw in "States Rights" and the refusal of some Confederate states to "share the wealth", so to speak, and the seeds of defeat were well sown.
And the other problem with Confederate railroads was the lack of railroad equipment manufacturers, locomotives, rails, you name it. Only the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond could handle that, but they were heavily involved with war production and couldn't make everything at once. Once cut off from Northern railroad manufacturers the Southern roads were on the path to ruin as equipment wore out and there was little they could do about it.
Old quote* about military campaigns, seems applicable here:
"Amateurs study tactics, but professionals study logistics [read: railroads]."
(*variously attributed to Gens. George S. Patton and George Marshall, among others)
And from the 1991 "Desert Storm" Gulf War, Gen. Gus Pagonis won a hefty promotion from Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf for handling those logistics so well.
Murphy Siding (from the 4th post on Page 1 of this thread) In a case like this, where the west bank of the river would start with a 20' high, built up ROW, I have a hard time visualizing how this would progress. Would they mark the centerline of the ROW, then build up the elevation, correcting as they went up, or were they that acurate in the 3 dimensions to start with?
The goal of this exercise is to closely balance the cut and fill volumes, within a reasonable distance of each other. Hence, every horse-cart load of soil that is excavated then needs to be moved only a short distance before there's a place where it can be dumped and used to build up a needed embankment to form a roadbed. Likewise, all the soil needed for that embankment can be generated from nearby cuts. This way, there are neither large quantities of earth that need to be "wasted" = disposed off-site in an unproductive pile that serves no useful function, nor "borrowed" = excavated from off the proposed rail line (such as at a quarry or "borrow pit") and brought to the site of the work, because the planned earthwork for the line is not yielding the amount of soil needed for its embankments and fills, etc.
Note too that it is also desirable to minimize the general or average amount of 'haul' of the 'cut' earth to the 'fill' location where it is needed. A 'balanced' earthwork job will not be economical if the excess cut material has to be hauled many miles to the place where it is needed.
The proposed line location will be revised and recalculated several times by the locating engineer and his staff of assistants to achieve a near-balance of cuts with the fills, and a reasonably short average haul of it at most locations. Sometimes, though, rather than haul a lot, a contractor will instead elect to borrow or waste more locally.
In your instance, Murphy, the locating engineer evidently found an acceptable balance of the cuts with the fills if he made that fill about 20 feet high as you mention - that probably used up a lot of earth that was taken from thew cuts through nearby hills.
The other criteria that might govern the height of the fill would be the river's height during floods getting close to that 20 ft. height - to keep the tracks above the water, and/ or to provide sufficient overhead clearance under the railroad bridge for any ship or barge traffic on the river. In those kinds of scenarios, the fill or embankment height is as high as it needs to be, regardless of attempting to balance cuts with fills, or minimizing the haul and avoiding borrow pits, etc.
Hope this is helpful. Again, it is only an overview of these principles and process, and I invite mudchicken, diningcar, and others with experience in this kind of work to join in with their insights and observations, etc.
hrevise
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