CHAPTER XXXI.

CONSTRUCTION OF RAILROAD LINES.

The Virginia and Truckee Railroad, runs from Virginia City to Reno, on the Truckee River, at which point it connects with the Central Pacific Railroad. The length of the road is 52 miles, and it is undoubtedly the crookedest road in the United States—probably the crookedest in the world.

Ground was broken for the road, on the 19th of February, 1869, and in eight months after, it was doing business between Virginia and Carson City—a distance of twenty-one miles.

The heavy work lies between these points—nearly all of the tunnels, deep cuts and sharp curves—and for the greater part of the distance the road was cut through solid rock.

From Virginia City to the Carson River, a distance of 13 miles, the track is a continuous incline. The maximum grade is 116 feet. The maximum radius of curves is 300 feet, and the degrees of curvature amount in all—between Virginia and Carson City—to 6,120; or, in other words, are equal to going seventeen times round a circle. Thus, in traveling from Virginia City to Carson—twenty-one miles—one passes through a sufficiency of curves to carry him round a circle, 360 degrees, seventeen times. This surpasses any “swinging round the circle,” political or otherwise, that has ever been done in the United States.

There are on the road six tunnels of an aggregate length of 2,400 feet. All of these tunnels are lined through their whole length with zinc, as a protection against fire. Wood is the fuel used on all the locomotives, and in tugging up the mountain with heavy trains such a Vesuvius of sparks is poured from the smoke-stacks, that without the protection of the zinc lining the woodwork of tunnels would constantly be taking fire.

As I have said, the heaviest work on the road was between Virginia and Carson City. The cost of this section of 21 miles of road was $1,750,000, or about $83,000 per mile, which includes permanent way and graduation—that is, with the track laid, and the road ready for business. The cost of the whole road was about $3,000,000. From Virginia City to Reno, the terminus of the road, the distance in an air-line is 16½ miles, while by rail it is 52 miles. By the wagon-road, over the mountain, the distance from Virginia to Reno is only 22 miles. Over this wagon-road, known as the Griger Grade, supplies of all kinds, including heavy machinery for the mines, were brought to Virginia, previous to the completion of the railroad; the hauling being done by teams of ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen mules each, attached to huge wagons known as “prairie schooners.”

As will be seen, by the distance from Virginia City to Reno in a direct line, the traveler not only swings seventeen times round the circle, in going from Virginia to Carson, but has almost completed a grand circle when he reaches the end of the road and connects with the Central Pacific. He starts off in a southerly direction, and so continues until Carson is reached, when he turns and travels northward until he arrives at Reno.

At Steamboat Springs, between Carson City and Reno, the traveler who starts from Virginia has traveled forty miles by rail, yet it is but 5½ miles from the place whence he started, Steamboat Springs being situated just back or west of Mount Davidson, on the eastern face of which Virginia City stands. Between Virginia and Carson the only piece of straight road is one little stretch about 5½ miles in length, but between Carson and Reno are found several miles of road tolerably straight. The road does an immense local carrying business. From 500 to 800 tons of ore are daily carried over it to the mills on the Carson River, and return trains bring great quantities of wood, lumber, and timber for use at the mines. From thirty to as high as forty-five trains per day pass over that part of the road lying between Virginia and Carson City.

Notwithstanding the crookedness of the road, trains run over it at a high rate of speed, as the road is kept in perfect order and steel rails are used on the mountains where short curves most abound. So crooked is the road that in places, in going down the mountain with a long train, the locomotive seems to be coming back directly toward the rear car, when directly it gracefully sheers off and heads down the mountain again, the train being thrown into the form of the letter S, reminding one of what the Bible says of the “way of a serpent on a rock.”

From Reno—over the whole length of the road—come vast amounts of machinery, stores, and supplies of all kinds for the mines and mills, and goods and merchandise for all of the towns along the river and in the mines. Along the road are a great number of side tracks and switches leading to mills and mining works. Some of these are of considerable length and, as more are constantly being constructed, the indications are that the added length of these will possibly exceed that of the main road.

Branch roads, all of a permanent and substantial character, are being built to the shafts of the leading mines, to be used in taking in machinery, wood, timber, lumber, and other supplies, and for sending ore out to the mills. Many of these side-tracks are laid in places where it would be almost impossible to construct an ordinary wagon-road, and to see trains darting out of tunnels, and rushing along the face of almost perpendicular hills, disappearing behind a great tower of rock one moment, and the next coming in sight again and swinging round a second rugged tower, looks somewhat too “lively.” All the wonderful engineering required in the construction of these side-tracks, as well as in the main road, was done by Mr. I. E. James, an old resident of the country—the man who has done nearly all of the intricate surveying that has been required in the leading mines on the Comstock lode. Although one of the most modest and unassuming men on the Pacific Coast, with him nothing in the way of engineering appears to be impossible.

After having seen the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, all will say that there is no region so rugged but that a track for the “iron horse” may be found over it and through it in all directions. When engineers, conductors, and other railroad men from the Atlantic States, first begin running on the Virginia and Truckee road they promise themselves that they will make a very short stay, but in a few months they begin to take pride in their ability to run on such a road; they like the excitement of it and consider that those who only run on roads that are straight and level know but little about the beauties of the business—about railroading as a fine art. Although these men run trains down the mountains from Virginia City to Carson River swinging seventeen times round the circle and going at a fearful rate of speed, yet serious accidents very seldom occur. The trains are timed by telegraph and the stations are so numerous that the conductors are always well informed in regard to the trains on the road, and their position.

Surveys have been made for a narrow-gauge railroad from Virginia City to Reno, and thence to the northward, along the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This road will run northward from Virginia—starting out in an opposite direction from that taken by the Virginia and Truckee Railroad, and will pass over some very rough country, but will reach Reno by a shorter _route_ than the other road named. The object in building this narrow-gauge road is the tapping of the vast forests of pine lying along the eastern slope of the Sierras.

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