I always thought Saluda was the steepest.
A short video regarding the Madison Railroad’s 5.89% incline.
Have known about the Madison Incline, however, I never knew or realized that that line ran to North Vernon. As a Train Order Operator I worked for the B&O at North Vernon. One is never too old to learn something!
The difference between Saluda and Madison grade has been that Saluda was a ‘though’ grade encountered between end points, whereas Madison is a terminating grade and has alway been, at best, a minor branch line.
The Madison Incline is something of a special case because it’s a line built to a river, not to connect with other railroad lines. If there had been more traffic it is likely that a lower-grade line down the bluffs would have been made; if through traffic warranted, a higher-level bridge might have been built (but essentially bypassing Madison the riverport). The sitution reminded me of Vicksburg, MS (where the Meridian Speedway goes over the river) where there is a similar drop down bluffs in a comparatively short distance through heroic earthworks to where the ferries carried the Queen and Crescent traffic across.
The other ‘model’ here is the idea of incline or plane railroads, which was still effective at the time this line was planned out. Here grades along ‘most’ of the line were minimized on the permanent-way model, with large grade changes being made up ‘planes’ that could be worked with stationary engines and ropes (as in Pennsylvania) or with skips (as at the Ashley Planes, which will put the Madison grade in perspective if you compare them) and with special braking if necessary going down the ‘other’ side. The PRR operation across Horse Shoe is a slightly later adaptation of the idea which limits the heavy adhesion-grade operation to a comparatively short section amenable to helper operation.
Those SD7s were interesting, and I’m glad to see them getting recognition.
I don’t see any distinction between Madison Grade and Saluda Grade that overrides the claim that Madison is the steepest of the two.
Neither right now is in service.
Saluda has had considerably more tonnnage and was built to main track standards, Madison not so much.
There was a similar situation with a different solution at Natchez, Mississippi; the Natchez - Vidalia ferry.
On the Natchez side the railroad built a 4% grade with two switchbacks:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QduqFM_GruQ/SUmssm0iRlI/AAAAAAAAKss/KdqEVOqkhC8/s640/JY+Lockwood+at+Natchez_(500_x_475).jpg
https://www.westernrailimages.com/Mopac/1970s-Mopac/i-H5kkvWr
Please scroll down, I can’t link to the single photos.
Regards, Volker
“Steeper”. For the next time you need a comparative and not superlative.
The distinction is that Saluda is part of a through main line; substantial trains ran through (you may have seen the Southern training film with the unit coal-train operation). The Madison incline operated no differently from Vicksburg/Natchez as a last-mile access to water transport, and part of the reason it never thrived is precisely that it was not part of the ‘general system of rail transportation’ at both ends. As I noted, had it been a through line there would have been a high-level bridge at some point connecting to the remaining well-built structure (and perhaps a new ‘Madison’ or other towns developing at the top of the bluffs); as it was, the failure of river shipping in general (see Twain’s Life on the Mississippi for the timeline) only sealed the white-elephant status of the tremendous civil earthwork that was the Incline further.
I would disagree with the “Madison - not so much” opinion: the amount of grading and work was colossal for the era, and to me still remains impressive. Whether or not the actual track on that grade was subsequently built up to heavier standards is a bit immaterial; it could be argued that well into the SD7 era it was perfectly adequate for the heaviest trains that actually needed to be sent up and down.
Having had the opportunity to switch cars at a number of large industrial plants - my ‘observation’ is that some tracks serving particular operations in those industries ‘may’ have tracks that have grades even stee
Hell yeah. We have a couple*. But they are not that long and are a pain enough. Couldn’t imagine running on them for miles.
*- including one with a customer’s gate at the bottom. We’ve bought that customer at least two new gates during two winters.
some planes brought filled cars down the mountain, using gravity to their advantage to pull empties up. The Mahanoy plane was not one of them. A barney road on the inner track, pulled by a cable powered by a steam engine at the top.
The approach to the Boeing plant in Everett is, I believe, at least 6%, and I have heard of leads being as high as 11%. But these are explicitly ‘side tracks’ - the railroad to Madison is significant as being a bit like the Portage Railroad of roughly similar vintage, a shortest-route state-sanctioned line that happens to require severe grade to get that last couple of miles … still straight … down the 400-plus feet of vertical excursion to the water terminus.
Now, no one spending all that money on that very substantial grading expected that within a short time most of the north-south freight then being carried on river shipping would be diverted purely to rail. One might compare the situation with the Hudson River Railroad being built to Albany to … connect with the Erie Canal, or conversely the situation with the Erie Railroad initially going to Piermont instead of close connections to Manhattan. The difference is that it was possible in the later cases to build the full railroad connections; at Madison they were stuck with a very expensive ramp and that turned out to be that – there was never ‘enough more’ money to go beyond what it was.
To go with the Mahanoy Plane are the Ashley Planes (with 4 times the vertical rise as at Madison) up and then over through Solomon Gap, which were in use all the way to 1948 for regular through traffic.
It is difficult to conceive of working this sort of approach strictly with adhesion traction and braking … let alone operate cost-effectively and still safely with loaded anthracite cars. Note, inherently, that the Madison line could and perhaps should have been worked with a barney/cable system … but its economics did not so permit.
So the real argument here is not ‘the steepest grade in the United States’ but the steepest cheap excuse for what could be expediently worked with Gowan and Marx style adhesion at the limit. (Note also that they tried to set up to use a rack system but couldn’t keep it maintained … and, reading between the lines, didn’t have the money to try when rack technology improved in a few years.)
My hat was off to Reuben Wells who figured out how to make this trick work, and it is still off to him today.
Oh yes, there are distinctions galore. But, as I said, none of them override the question that Zardoz focused on in his original post regarding only the question of gradie
If it matters any, ever since I was small I remember reading that Madison Incline was considered the steepest grade on the American railroad system – not Saluda.
It isn’t the tonnage that makes the difference, it’s the kind of railroad. That’s the reason I brought up the Ashley Planes, which WERE a through railroad over a mountain (albeit a line which, like Madison, originally ended at a water connection).
For those still curious about ‘Madison Hill’ here is a linked site to an earlier Forum Thread on it:
No one has claimed that 4.4% is more than 5.9%.
Not that easy to say what the steepest RR in the country was, even aside from arguing about what kind of RR. The WM branch for which they ordered that big Shay-- supposedly it had 100-200 ft? of 9%. Should that count, if it’s true?
Don’t forget the Trains article (1960s?) about those Michigan RRs that had momentum grades over 10%-- in the 1920s, or earlier?
When GN built the spur to the Boeing plant, Trains said the grade was 5.6%.
Yes, as I recall, the Porterfield & Ellis Railroad, aka Pori Loop Line near Pori, Michigan used rod engines (4-4-0s) on a standard gage line with grades as steep as 20%.
Calling Saluda the “steepest grade” is careless. Most of the references I’ve seen termed it the nation’s “steepest mainline grade”, acknowledging that the Madison grade was steeper.
This is the claim I have always heard!
One reference calls it the steepest class I mainline railroad grade.
The June 1969 issue of Trains Magazine contains a feature article entitled “WORLD’S STEEPEST ADHESION RAILROAD?” The title refers to the subject of the article which is the Porterfield & Ellis Railroad with its 20% grades. That was their mainline.