542 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



road has a duplication of machinery throughout. Besides the cables there are two 

 carrying pulleys side by side that support the cable in every pulley-pit, which are 

 thirty-five feet apart along the road; at the extreme ends of the railway, where in 

 the ordinary cable road there is one sheave twelve feet in diameter, in the dupli- 

 cate road there are two. This duplication is still more extensive in that two in- 

 dependent sets of driving machinery are provided in the engine-house, also engines, 

 boilers, etc.; in fact, the provision made in the way of machinery is sufficient to 

 build another and independent road; thus the cost is very considerably greater 

 than in the case of a single cable railway. 



There is probably no cable railway in the country, that in constructing pre- 

 sented so many difficult features to be overcome as the Kansas City road. The 

 wrought-iron elevated structure from Union Avenue to the top of the bluff" does 

 not represent all the work done at this end of the road. At Union Avenue large 

 and massive brick foundations were built pyramidal in shape. Old sewers were 

 encountered requiring special provision to overcome these unexpected obstacles. 

 At the bluff very seiious difficulties presented themselves. In locating the found- 

 ations for the wrought-iron supports for the viaduct it was discovered that a local 

 movement in limestone ledge was taking place. A great portion of earth and 

 loose rock deposited at the base of the bluff was removed, exposing the rock 

 ledge in question five feet in thickness, underneath which was a stratum of soap- 

 stone and bituminous shale eighteen feet in depth, which disintegrated rapidly and 

 thus allowed the rock ledge above to fall in large fragments to the base of the 

 bluff. The rock ledge was cleared of earth and other materials, and all the 

 cracks or fissures located, which were then thoroughly cleaned out and filled 

 with liquid cement grout made from German Portland cement. When the cement 

 had set it excluded all water from springs and surface drainage from the base of 

 the rock, which before served as a lubricant to the moving ledge. The shale 

 and soapstone were further protected by building a stone wall in front of the verti- 

 cal face of the stratum, close to it; the space between the wall and shale was then 

 filled with concrete and cement grout, thus excluding air and vt'ater from the 

 exposed face of shale; the rock ledge was thus made solid and permanent, no 

 farther movement having been discovered. The process of disintegration of the 

 shale was watched with considerable interest. It was noticed that so long as the 

 shale contained some moisture, or the water was allowed to saturate the surface, 

 disintegration was retarded, but when the sun caused the shale to become dried 

 and warm, the absorbed air seemed to expand, thus throwing off small particles 

 of shale, which would have continued until the whole ledge had fallen but for the 

 protecting wall and the concrete excluding the air. 



The wrought-iron viaduct will, when completed, present a very interesting 

 piece of work. The incline down the bluff is eighteen and three-tenths feet in 

 loo feet and commences at the west line of Jefferson Street with an elevation of 

 191 feet and descends westwardly, at the rate mentioned, to the center of the 

 imain span across the Union Depot yards, the length of which span, from end- 

 pin to end-pin, is 186 feet. The incline commencing in the center of this span, 



