92 



ROUTE NEAR THE THIRTY-SECOND PARALLEL. 



Except the Baltimore and Ohio railroad, (one of the lines above mentioned) the exact height 

 of whose summit I cannot state, none of these great thoroughfares pass over ground so much 

 elevated above the sea as the Santiago route ; mid as all, in this respect, far exceed the works 

 of other countries, it ma} safely be said that the route described in these pages overcomes a 

 greater elevation than has yet been surmounted by railroad, (except perhaps in one instance,) 

 throughout the world. But the Santiago route is superior to most of the American roads above 

 enumerated in one respect. In approaching to, and departing from their main summits, those 

 roads cross over numerous secondary ranges and deep intervening valleys, which makes the 

 aggregate rise and fall much greater than the Santiago road, as will be seen by the following 

 table : 



Although the total elevation surmounted by European railroads is much less than in the cases 

 above cited, yet even there, in some instances, inclinations equal to the maximum gradient of 

 the Santiago road are now introduced, and overcome by locomotive power. Two or three 

 instances may be mentioned. 



In a work entitled &quot; The Practical Railway Engineer,&quot; published at London, in the year 1847, 

 is the following description of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railroad: 



&quot; The gradients vary from one in 880 (six feet per mile,) to one in 5,456 (about one foot per 

 mile,) except one incline of one mile, fourteen chains in length, which descends from the Cowlairs 

 towards the Glasgow station, at the rate of one in forty-three (123 feet per mile,) and has hitherto 

 been worked by stationary steam-engines, which are now, or are about to be, replaced by Ameri 

 can locomotive engines.&quot; 



Dr. Lardner, a distinguished writer on various scientific and practical subjects, in a late work 

 entitled &quot; Railway Economy in Europe and America,&quot; after giving a table of the German rail 

 ways, says : &quot; In the first and third columns of this table are given the characteristic or prevailing 

 gradients and radii ; and in the second and fourth columns are given those which occur only 

 exceptionally, when the character of the ground rendered them inevitable. In some cases as, 

 for example, in the section of the railway constructed from Brunswick to Harburgh, on the left 

 bank of the Elbe, facing Hamburgh the prevailing gradient is 1 in 166 (32 feet per mile;) but 

 in one section of this line, extending over a distance of about five miles, being the section between 

 Hamburgh and the station of Weinenburgh, there is a series, of gradients which vary from 1 in 

 100 (53 feet per mile,) to 1 in 50 (106 feet per mile.) No practical difficulty, however, is 

 encountered in the regular working of this part of the line by locomotives without assistant 

 engines. Trains of an average gross weight of sixty or seventy tons are drawn over this section 

 by locomotives whose weight does not exceed eighteen tons, having six coupled wheels of four 

 feet nine inches in diameter.&quot; 



