ng up and completing
the road for immediate use. Along the line of the completed road are
construction trains pushing 'to the front' with supplies. The advance
limit of the rails is occupied by a train of long box-cars with bunks
built within them, in which the men sleep at night and take their
meals. Close behind this train come train loads of ties, rails,
spikes, etc., which are thrown off to the side. A light car drawn by a
single horse gallops up, is loaded with this material and then is off
again to the front. Two men grasp the forward end of the rail and
start ahead with it, the rest of the gang taking hold two by two,
until it is clear of the car. At the word of command it is dropped
into place, right side up, during which a similar operation has been
going on with the rail for the other side,--thirty seconds to the rail
for each gang, four rails to the minute. As soon as a car is unloaded,
it is tipped over to permit another to pass it to the front and then
it is righted again and hustled back for another load.

"Close behind the track-layers comes the gaugers, then the spikers and
bolters. Three strokes to the spike, ten spikes to the rail, four
hundred rails to the mile. Quick work you say,--but the fellows on the
Union Pacific are tremendously in earnest."

Or as another writer has it, "We witnessed here the fabulous speed
with which the line was built. Through the two or three hundred miles
beyond were scattered ten to fifteen thousand men (?) in great gangs
preparing the road-bed with plows, scrapers, shovels, picks, and
carts, and among the rocks, with drills and powder were doing the
grading as rapidly as men could stand and move with their tools. Long
trains brought up to the end of the track, loads of ties and rails the
former were transferred to teams and sent one or two miles ahead and
put in place on the grade, then spikes and rails were reloaded on
platform cars and pushed up to the last previously laid rail and with
an automatic movement and celerity that was wonderful, practiced hands
dropped the fresh rails one after another on the ties exactly in line.
Hugh sledges sent the spikes home,--the car rolled on and the
operation was repeated; while every few minutes the long heavy train
behind sent out a puff of smoke from its locomotive and caught up with
its load of material the advancing work. The only limit to the
rapidity with which the track could thus be laid was the power of the
road behind