Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1916 — WON OVER OBSTACLES [ARTICLE]

WON OVER OBSTACLES

GREAT FEAT OF ENGINEERING ON ALASKAN RAILROAD. Difficulties That at First Sight Seemed Insurmountable Overcome hy the Courage and Skill With Which They Were Met. The building of the Miles Glacier bridge, on the route of the Copper River railway, may be taken as a typical example of the many and fearful obstacles that confront the railway builder in arctic Alaska, and is only one of many similar feats that could be cited. This 1,500-foot 'structure of steel, consisting of four spans carried on massive concrete piers, had to be erected across the rivet where .11 makes a double turn between the great living glaciers Miles and Childs. Both present 300-foot clifflike faces to the water for three miles and every spring precipitate into the swift current an endless flotilla of icebergs, many of them as big as a mansion. Here, indeed, was a problem —the building of bridge piers strong enough to withstand these masses of ice being hurled against them by a twelve-mile current. Everybody declared the feat impossible, but it was carried through after two years’ strenuous fighting against fearful odds. Great concrete piers, begun through the winter’s ice, were driven 40 to 50 feet through the river bottom to bedrock, and there anchored. They were built of solid concrete, heavily re-enforced with steel. A row of eighty-pound rails were set a foot apart all around and the whole structure bound together within the concrete in an amazingly massive manner. Then above the piers ice-break-ers of the same construction were raised.

The piers being finished, it was now necessary to connect them with a roadway of steel, and this had to be done in the winter, since no falsework would stand against the moving ice. It was a fearful and trying task. ’ Work was hurried forward and the last span was almost tn place when it was seen that the falsework that carried it had moved a distance .of -15 inches. The falsework that carried this span consisted of a thousand or two of piles driven deep into the bottom the river 40 feet below the surface. The ice was a solid sheet seven feet thick, and it was borne on a twelve-knot current. Into it the forest of piles was solidly frozen. But the spring break-up bad begun on the river, and the icecap, lifted 20 feet above its winter bed by the flood, was moving. The falsework, carrying a mass of unfinished steel, was 15 inches out of.line and had to be put back if communication wasto be established with the other side that winter. Any moment, for all the engineers knew, the falsework and span would be carried away. .They knew it would be a terrible tussle against seemingly overwhelming odds, but they determined to see it through. Steam from every available engine was driven into small feed pipes and every man in camp was put to work to steam melt or chop the seven feet of ice clear of the piles. And it was done. The holes were kept open throughout the day and night and in the bitter arctic cold hundreds of cross-pieces were unbolted and shifted while the river rose 21 feet.

Then began the movement up stream. At first it was but an inch a day; then three or four Inches. The melting and chopping went on almost unceasingly. Anchorages were hastily built into the ice above the bridge, and while a gang thawed and chopped at the ice around th,e piles the whole 450 feet of towering bridgework was pulled, dragged end coaxed inch by Inch back into its place. The engineers midnight, after an eighteen-hour day of one shift, that the last. bolt was driven home and the span settled down on its concrete At one o'clock the whole 450 Jeet of falsework was a chaotic The river had lost its fight by less than a single hour.