Somewhere around 1880, a predecessr of the Great Northern built a bridge the Big Sioux River, in Sioux Falls, S.D. It crossed over the top of part of the namesake falls, at a particularly wide spot. The west bank has a long area of built up ROW, to make a smooth transition up the hill of the river valley. In addition, the bridge and the built up ROW are laid out on a curve.
Before computers, calculators, satelites, etc… how did they lay this out and build it to the proper proportions?
Wye Level or Dumpy Level, Vernier Transit, chain, math tables, log tables and possibly a nomograph slide rule.
Horse power, steam power & a lot of enginuity.
Some of these guys would embarrass the h*ll out of some of today’s engineers.
(I have a Brass 1873 Gurley Engineer’s Transit in my living room, next to BossHen’s loom to remind me.)
They were called civil engineers. They learned math, algebra, etcetera. The did thier own computations and took the time it took to make it happen. Mudchicken listed the mechanical things…but most of all they were men with heads containing brains which did the work. In other words, you do the math and you’ve done the work. So, go figure.
In a case like this, where the west bank of the river would start with a 20’ high, built up ROW, I have a hard time visualizing how this would progress. Would they mark the centerline of the ROW, then build up the elevation, correcting as they went up, or were they that acurate in the 3 dimensions to start with?
Don’t forget the “plane table” instruments for mapping, field books and hard-lead pencils, vellum (high-grade tracing paper) and ruling pens for the topographic mapping and cross-section sheets, and lots of calculation paper and good old-fashioned 'number-crunching" - governed by years of hard-won experience, revealed wisdom, insight, artistry of a sort, and not a little simple genius. Remember, it was indeed the ‘rocket science’ of that day and age.
In response to Murphy’s most recent question: It’s a interactive or “trial-and-error” process (Lord, how I dislike that expression - it ought to be “trial-and-adjust” instead) that finds, collects, and analyzes all the data, and finds the perceived optimum solution at the time in detail on paper first. That’s much, much cheaper and faster than doing it with earth, iron, and concrete in the field at the site, and possible having to undo or redo some of it later on.
In brief, the process is:
Reconnaissance (sp?), a very quick and brief overview of the area to select the best location for the river crossing (expensive at best), and one or more likely good routes on either side of it. Not much detail yet - just “up that valley” or “then through that ridge someplace” - done from horseback, by eye, or with a barometer or handheld sighting level for rough elevations to within 100 ft. or so (kind of like a sextant on a ship) [mudchicken and maybe a few others know I’m using the wrong terminology here, but the right name wouldn’t mean anything to most readers].
Preliminary route location survey - just rough connecting of survey points at intervals of maybe 1,000 ft. apart, and elevations to within a foot or so at each one. This is to refine the recon survey, and enable choosing t
It was not that long ago, 1959-1960, when Santa Fe built the 44 mile Transcon line change in Arizona. I was one of the engineering party chiefs and we also used transits and levels albeit an upgrade from those mudchicken describes. We also used a 100 foot steel chain and did all of our computations on paper in the field with sine - cosine - tangent - cotangent tables to seconds and to eight decimal places. We built with cuts and fills in excess of 100 feet and through volcanic rock. We built it with maximum grades of 1% and curves no greater than one degree - and the one degree curves had 570 foot spirals. We had to improvise frequently to deal with unusual circumstances but todays Transcon would not be what it is without this major line change.
Yes I would do it all again, Just restore my 27 year old body. It was exhilarating and those of us still left to talk about it do so at every opportunity.
Reading about railroad construction in the 19th century will cause you to realize that the great unsung heros of the effort were the civil engineers.
Think of a tunnel. (I’ve been reading a lot recently on the consruction of the 1st US transcon.)
The CP building east from Sacramento had to dig several tunnels in the Sirerra Nevada mountains. They had no power tools, such as steam drills. They had no dynamite. The did, eventually, get to use some nitroglycerine. (It was created on site after a couple of unfortunate shipping incidents.) Basically they drilled by hand and blasted with black powder.
Inside the tunnel the only light available was from candles and tourches. Maybe they had some whale oil lamps. Kerosene wasn’t a big seller yet.
The tunnels were drilled from both ends as time was important. The civil engieers had a problem in three dimensions. The two bore holes had to meet flush on, sometimes on a curve.
Those CEs would bring those two bores together within two inches of being square on. I’d like to meet the man or woman who, working under those conditions, could do that today. And remember, those guys in the 1860s didn’t have MS degrees from engineering schools. They might have had some education in surveying, but basically everything else they knew they had picked up on their own.
The Egyptions and Incas did things that are amazing. The Incas had tolerences thatcan not be achieved today and nobody can figure out how they did it.
We like to think of our ancestors as primitive, but that is just arrogance. People 100 or even 1,000 years ago were just as intelligent as we are today, they just didn’t have the advantage of spending the first 20 years of their lives in schools. Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
Knowledge and technology advance because each generation has the advantage of starting where the previous generation left off instead of at the beginning. The things that forward thinking people spent a lifetime learning by trial and error are passed on to students today in a semester.
The definition of a recession is when the economy gets so bad that you are forced to do without things that your grandparents never dreamed of having.
Aliens. Or so some people say…
diningcar- Can you give some examples of improvising? It sounds like your tools weren’t a whole lot more hightech than 100 years before. When I took surveying in college, in 1980, we learned with a steel tape and a transit. The electronic age couldn’t have come much later.
When I was in USAF tech school, we had one “block” that was heavy on calculations. The students fell loosely into three groups - pencil and paper, slide rule, and the new-fangled calculators (which at the time were still limited to add, subtract, multiply, and divide).
As a rule, the pencil and paper crowd finished calculations before anyone else…
Our police accident reconstruction folks now use GPS and laser based tools to plot a scene. One sets up with a high-tech transit whilst one or two others walk around the scene with mirror posts hitting points of interest. They later go back and connect the dots for an uber-accurate picture of the layout. I’m sure they’ve borrowed the tools from the surveying industry (figuratively speaking).
of strings, measuring tapes, plumb bobs and folding rules…[;)]
Larry, do you remember when abacus users were pitted against the early computers–and the abacus users finished the calculations before the computers did?
I have appreciated these comments concerning the use of various tools, especially the comments from Paul North, who (as I recall from a post of his a few years ago) was the last student in his school to use a slide rule when taking a test. I still have my K&E slide rule that I used in college (one of my friends had one twice as long (he carried in a case somewhat like a scabbard for a short sword); I think it could be read to four significant figures.
When I was taking quantitative analysis, I used logarithms to four decimal places for my calculations. I had to write all of the calculations down in my lab book; now I would simpply write the equation and the answer down.
diningcar- Can you give some examples of improvising? It sounds like your tools weren’t a whole lot more hightech than 100 years before. When I took surveying in college, in 1980, we learned with a steel tape and a transit. The electronic age couldn’t have come much later.
Murphy, so many little things, but I will first say that this 44 miles of new construction was begun in September 1959 and the first revenue train ran on December 19, 1960. That is fifteen and 1/2 months from breaking ground to having a double track CTC railroad in operation. So we obviously had to be inovative with establishing controls from which the contractor (Morrisson Knudsen) could work.
Perhaps the best illustration would be to describe how the deep rock cuts, some over 100 feet, were designed. Rather than have a continuous one half to one slope from top to bottom these were established with benches at 15-20 foot intervals. So the initial stakes were the center line (control) and then the slope stakes set to say Cut 20 at one half to one. The contractor would place the explosives and after blowing the rock to a depth of 20 feet would then excavate and remove it. We then had to re-establish the center line and set additional slope stakes after creating a 15 foot bench. The process would continue with perhaps two more benches befor reaching the designed subgrade level.
The innovative part was to have reference points (RP’s) so that the center line could be re-established because the blasting and excavation had destroyed all of the initial controls. We set had the transit set on the initial control points and the turned approximately 45 degrees and set two RP’s at sufficient distance so they would not be damaged; then flipping the scope we set two more o
In that period of time today you wouldn’t even have the environmental impact and engineering studies done yet.
Like near me they put in a Sewage System for houses that where close enough to be near Sewage Lines that are in the City. Well the Engineer that desgined the System I would not trust to make Bookshelf. He had sewer lines that ended up being Drilled thru a total of 4 Water mains 2 Drainage tiles 2 Storm drains and the best one was the Water Feed line for the ENTIRE TOWN. The guy could not read a Blueprint of depths or where lines where located to Save his BUTT.
He is the Next Generation of Civil Engineers that have no clue how to deal with Hidden Danger. He better be glad all the Phone and other Com lines were Above ground let alone the Power or someone might have been KILLED. Luckily they only collapsed 4 Basements.
Sure you aren’t talking about the general civil contractor and not the engineer? (big difference)
Just to add a bit…
Reading all the comments reminds me of why so many military men went into railroading in the early years. The Military Academy at West Point was one of the few schools, if not the only school turning out trained engineers. Other engineers learned through apprenticeship, but if you had a West Pointer available you knew you had some one special.
Interesting speculation here: Robert E. Lee was an engineer, second in the Class of 1829 at West Point. He could have left the Army anytime after say, 1840 and walked right into a railroad job. Imagine how different American history would have been had he done so.
Nope the Contractors where TELLING this IDIOT that there was UNDERGROUND Pipes and such here. He was like they are Not Marked with Flags or Ground Paint even though they were MARKED on the Plat Maps he was LOOKING AT and 2 feet from him was the spot for the Feed for the Water plant was the Place where it Cam OUT OF THE GROUND. No he was not a Contractor Worker he was dressed in a Set of Khakis and was carrying the Blueprints of the project around all day and was driving the Truck of the Engineer Company that got the Job. He was asked after that one by the Water Company if he had passed Blueprint and Map reading in College he said he Slept thru it.