The Last Spike: The Great Railway, 1881-1885 Read Online Free
Author: Pierre Berton
with the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway owned by members of the CPR Syndicate. Thus the CPR enjoyed a freight monopoly on goods and grain leaving Winnipeg for the East.
Secondly, there was the line between Fort William and Selkirk, near Winnipeg-433 miles long-still under construction but slated for completion in the summer of 1882.
Thirdly, there was the 215-mile stretch that led from Savona’s Ferry on Kamloops Lake through the Fraser Canyon to Port Moody on Pacific tidewater. Construction had begun on this line under the contractor Andrew Onderdonk in the spring of 1880, but very little had yet been built.
Construction would proceed in four major stages:
First, the surveyors would locate the actual line, laying out the curves and gradients and driving stakes along the centre line as a guide to navvies who followed.
Next, the road would be graded, ready to lay steel. This was the most important operation of all. A swath sixty-six feet wide would be chopped out of bushland and forest. Tunnels would be drilled through mountain barriers and galleries notched into the sides of cliffs. Bridges of various designs would be flung across coulees and river valleys. Cuts would be blasted out of rock and the broken debris thus obtained would be “borrowed” to fill in the intervening gorges and declines so that the grade might be as level as possible. Swamps and lakes would be diked or drained. On the plains, huge blades drawn by horses would scrape the sod into a ditched embankment four feet high and nine hundred miles long so that the trains could ride high above the winter snowdrifts.
The third operation was to lay the steel. Ties or “sleepers” would be placed at right angles across the grade at exact distances. Parallel rails would be laid on top of them and spiked to the ties. Fishplates would connect one rail to the next.
Finally, the line would be “ballasted,” the space between the ties filledwith crushed gravel so that the line would not shift when the trains roared over it.
In addition, all the varied paraphernalia of an operating line – stations, sidings, water towers, turntables – would have to be installed before the railway could be said to be complete. Later on, branch lines to serve neighbouring communities would connect with the main trunk so that the railroad would resemble an intricate tree more than twenty-five hundred miles long, coiling through all of western Canada.
Almost twenty years before, the perceptive Sandford Fleming had reckoned that such a trunk-line would cost about one hundred million dollars to construct. That rough estimate was probably in the minds of the Syndicate that contracted to build the CPR . From the government the company received a cash subsidy of twenty-five million dollars, to be paid out in stages as the railway advanced, and twenty-five million acres of prairie land, between the Red River and the Rockies, also to be awarded in stages as construction was completed. The Syndicate hoped to turn the land into ready cash as quickly as it was earned by mortgaging it, at the rate of one dollar an acre, through the issuance of “land grant bonds.” It could also mortgage the main line at the rate of ten thousand dollars a mile, and issue capital stock up to twenty-five million dollars. Unlike other North American railway companies, the CPR shunned the idea of bonded indebtedness and heavy stock promotions. It expected-naively, as it developed – to build the railway with the subsidy, the proceeds of the land sales, the operating profits, and a minimum of borrowing. The first stock issue was fifty thousand shares at a par value of a hundred dollars a share; almost all of the five millions was subscribed on February 17, 1881, by the members of the original CPR Syndicate. By March 3, an additional $1,100,000 had been subscribed; that was the extent of the original stock sale.
The hustle in Winnipeg, that spring of 1881, was in sharp contrast to the
Secondly, there was the line between Fort William and Selkirk, near Winnipeg-433 miles long-still under construction but slated for completion in the summer of 1882.
Thirdly, there was the 215-mile stretch that led from Savona’s Ferry on Kamloops Lake through the Fraser Canyon to Port Moody on Pacific tidewater. Construction had begun on this line under the contractor Andrew Onderdonk in the spring of 1880, but very little had yet been built.
Construction would proceed in four major stages:
First, the surveyors would locate the actual line, laying out the curves and gradients and driving stakes along the centre line as a guide to navvies who followed.
Next, the road would be graded, ready to lay steel. This was the most important operation of all. A swath sixty-six feet wide would be chopped out of bushland and forest. Tunnels would be drilled through mountain barriers and galleries notched into the sides of cliffs. Bridges of various designs would be flung across coulees and river valleys. Cuts would be blasted out of rock and the broken debris thus obtained would be “borrowed” to fill in the intervening gorges and declines so that the grade might be as level as possible. Swamps and lakes would be diked or drained. On the plains, huge blades drawn by horses would scrape the sod into a ditched embankment four feet high and nine hundred miles long so that the trains could ride high above the winter snowdrifts.
The third operation was to lay the steel. Ties or “sleepers” would be placed at right angles across the grade at exact distances. Parallel rails would be laid on top of them and spiked to the ties. Fishplates would connect one rail to the next.
Finally, the line would be “ballasted,” the space between the ties filledwith crushed gravel so that the line would not shift when the trains roared over it.
In addition, all the varied paraphernalia of an operating line – stations, sidings, water towers, turntables – would have to be installed before the railway could be said to be complete. Later on, branch lines to serve neighbouring communities would connect with the main trunk so that the railroad would resemble an intricate tree more than twenty-five hundred miles long, coiling through all of western Canada.
Almost twenty years before, the perceptive Sandford Fleming had reckoned that such a trunk-line would cost about one hundred million dollars to construct. That rough estimate was probably in the minds of the Syndicate that contracted to build the CPR . From the government the company received a cash subsidy of twenty-five million dollars, to be paid out in stages as the railway advanced, and twenty-five million acres of prairie land, between the Red River and the Rockies, also to be awarded in stages as construction was completed. The Syndicate hoped to turn the land into ready cash as quickly as it was earned by mortgaging it, at the rate of one dollar an acre, through the issuance of “land grant bonds.” It could also mortgage the main line at the rate of ten thousand dollars a mile, and issue capital stock up to twenty-five million dollars. Unlike other North American railway companies, the CPR shunned the idea of bonded indebtedness and heavy stock promotions. It expected-naively, as it developed – to build the railway with the subsidy, the proceeds of the land sales, the operating profits, and a minimum of borrowing. The first stock issue was fifty thousand shares at a par value of a hundred dollars a share; almost all of the five millions was subscribed on February 17, 1881, by the members of the original CPR Syndicate. By March 3, an additional $1,100,000 had been subscribed; that was the extent of the original stock sale.
The hustle in Winnipeg, that spring of 1881, was in sharp contrast to the
Readers choose
Gina Henning
Judith Pella
Niobia Bryant
Marcia Muller
Peter Straub
Mali Klein Sheila Snow
John Sandford
Lindsey Davis
Jane Kirkpatrick
Mack Maloney