have to contend with whirling clouds of soft pampas grass. The Buenos Ayres Great Southern is especially afflicted in this way, for it runs through vast plains in a dead straight line for hundreds of miles. At certain seasons a wind rises, picks up veritable clouds of the long dry grass, and deposits it in clinging beds, many miles long, right over the track. Deep cuttings have been known to be entirely filled up with this grass, and also with light dust, which is often even more troublesome than the snow of northern countries. The companies erect special wire fences to entrap the "paja volodora," as it is called, and a special staff piles the stuff into colossal mounds and sets it on fire. The Argentine companies, too, have terrible floods to contend with; and periodically rent and torn by the Mendoza River in flood which comes down from the snows with inconceivable fury. The Buenos Ayres Pacific has one stretch, "straight" of two hundred and three miles. Its floods are freakish, for there are no water courses, nor any appreciable slope. The rain, therefore, accumulates on the surface. forming in places a monstrous shallow lake from five to ten thousand square miles in extent. The "wash-out" is a watery enemy of a different kind, and much more disastrous. They are of frequent occurrence on South American, West Indian and other tropical lines, and are commonly due to a rush of water, caused by a river's sudden change of course. These assaults have been known to sweep the permanent way from under the track, leaving it suspended in midair, and held together only by the sleepers and fish-plates. A typical company displaying great resource in fighting wash-outs and land-slides is the Mexican Southern, which suffers much in August and September. On one memorable occasion ninety landslides fell in a single day! And that same day saw forty-five wash-outs on the road, north of Perian Station. Thus the line has to be protected by stone walls against raging rivers that begin to exercise a "scouring" pressure. This is also defeated by sacks of sand, thrown in around bridge-piers and other threatened railroad works. The same company, like its Indian and Japanese colleagues, has to contend with severe earthquakes which in a moment will convert the best-laid road into a tortuous and sinuous brace of metals, which appear as a nightmare in the eyes of the railroad man. But there is no better examples of railroad enterprise than the Callao and Oroya system in Peru. When the engineers and surveyors were mapping out this line, temporary ledges had to be blasted for them in the sheer faces of terrible precipices, so that they might set up their instruments in a rock-cut niche. Perhaps the most remarkable feature even on these lines is the Verrugas Viaduct, two hundred and fifty-two feet high and five hundred and seventy-three feet long. It cost upwards of $170,000, and none but runaway sailors, accustomed to work at dizzy heights, were employed in its construction. Great ingenuity, patience and resourcefulness sheer; under menacing spurs of rock; and over apparently fathomless gorgesa magnificent monument of human ingenuity, calling for skill and daring of a very high order. Among troubles out of the ordinary, too, are the sharp cyclones such as blew a train completely over at Frontera Station, on the Cordoba and Rosario Line in the Argentine; the sea-spray that corroded and bent the rails on the Barbadoes systems; and the common narcissus that plagues the scenic mountain railroads of Switzerland. The greatest affliction a railroad knows, however, is the winter's snow. In Rus sia drifting is prevented by snow-screens, made of specially selected shrubs and tall trees, and in our own country and in Canada we find snowfighting reduced to a science. Nowadays every Western road has its own force of rotary snow-plows, with a large force of snowfighters, every one of them willing and able to take up the challenge of grim Winter. In the old days when the work was not done on scientific principles, the snow-plow's charge of a mountainous drift often spelled disaster; and from the broken machine hurled back by the icehard drift, brave men were dug out dead or dying of broken limbs. At Truckee, California, eight engines once "bucked" head-long into a slide pack, and from the débris less than half their crews came forth uninjured! But the rotary of today, that cuts through mighty snow-masses which in the early days would have meant complete blockade, is one of the marvels of modern railroading. In effect it is a monstrous revolving auger carried in at protective shield. protective shield. Externally it looks like a wrecking car, and inside it is the engine that works the "eater," which bites into the white drift that bars East from West. At the machine's end is a great wheel in a circular shell. This wheel has oblique cutting flanges, that bore into the snow mountain, whirling the while like the screw propellers of a ship. Behind the propelling engines come the tender and repair cars, and those containing the laborers and their tools. It is an inspiring sight to see the rotary hurled with a rush and a plunge into the white mass. Dense smoke pours from the eager engines; the great blades of the rotary eat relentlessly into the drift, and the snow shoots out of the holes at the side, forming a vast white nimbus, constantly moving forward in triumph. At length only the spouting stacks of the locomotives are seen, belching blackness in the virgin wild erness. A few hours later the luxurious "Limited" comes tearing along with its palace cars, OVER BY A CYCLONE. |