The Elements of Railroading; A Series of Short Essays Reprinted from the Railroad Gazette (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. DRAINAGE. Results Of Bad Drainage?Ditches At Top Of Slope?Tile Drains?Pole Drains?Draining Yards?Ditching? Provision Against Floods. There is probably no written book treating of the construction of roads or of railroads in which the necessity of drainage is not more or less insisted upon; yet in the building of our railways it really seems to be the last matter to be attended to. Examine any newly opened road, and you will see that the engineers have been careful to have the works completed with care, to conform to the standard sections. The assistant in charge of any division has possibly quarreled with the contractor a half-dozen times about each cutting, in order to get the slopes dressed to a true plane, instead of being left a warped surface. It wouldbe a marvel, nevertheless, if any measures had been taken to preserve the slopes, or the ditches at the bottom of them, which are relied upon to drain the ballast. Generally the first hard rains of spring, aided by the thawing of the frozen earth, suffice to break down the slopes, fill up the ditches, and reduce the force engaged upon maintenance of way to a condition of despair; for the ballast must become saturated with water, the outer portion of it gets filled with mud, destroying its usefulness in great part; it is not unusual for the track to be floated by the mud and water, before the ditching train can remove enough of the sloughing banks to enable the water to run away at the sides of the cut. Matters are the worst in clay cuttings, of course, although bad enough in any wet soil; that is, in any soil which does not drain itself, as sand or gravel will do, if the clay substratum is not too near. If the sloughing is very bad, it is probable that a heavy stone wall will be decided upon as the proper...