Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 267, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 November 1917 — ROAD WAS ELUSIVE [ARTICLE]

ROAD WAS ELUSIVE

Three Times a Thaw Permitted Russian Railroad to Sink Out of Sight. WAS BUILT BY TORCHLIGHT Parts of It Were Lost Three Times When Warm Winds Turned Frozen Tundras on Which It Was Laid Into Bottomless Morasses. One of the most fascinating romances of railroad engineering is the building of the great Murmar railroad, from Petrograd to Kola bay, Russia’s ice free port. Built by torchlight An the darkness of Arctic winter, parjs of it were three times lost when warm winds turned the frozen tundras on which it was laid u into bottomless mSrasses of mud and water. The railroad is 930 miles long and part of it is a three-track line. The Russians learned from the paralysis of the Trans-Siberian line that a onetrack road is almost useless when called on for express service. - Two tracks are used for loaded cars going away from Kola. The third track is for empties coming back. Hundreds of Laborers Died. Three races, Russians, Austrians and Mongols, helped build the line. Hundreds, if not thousands, died from cold, hunger and disease, but now the line is through to stay, and its three tracks are taking every day 200 carloads from the mountains of supplies that have accumulated while the road was in the process of construction. First, Russians were employed as railroad builders. They had the easiest part of the line to build, before it reached the tundras. Then they were all called away to the front and Austrian prisoners were sent to take their places. The prisoners were guarded by regiments of half-wild Tartars and Mongols. Neither the Austrians nor their guards knew anything about railroad building, and there were so few experts in the region that it was impossible for them to oversee the work properly. The Austrians laid the ties on ice and frozen ground; and one construction train got through to Kola bay. Then a thaw came and tjie triin could not get back. There was no track. Great stretches of rails had disappeared. American Methods Won. - The Austrians were set to work again, better supervised this time, and they had at least a semblance of roadbed when the rails met south of Kola. But the ballast’had been laid again by torchlight, aid when a thaw came much of it slumped beneath the tracks. After that the Russians took a leaf from the 'history of the great American transcontinental railroads. They herded the . Austrians back to the prison camps and brought across the Trans-Siberian railroad thousands of Chinese coolies and .Mongols to take their places. By this time so much indignation over the ghastly failures on the railroad had arista'"that the Russian officials were stirred out of their sloth. They soon got down to hard pan and the railroad went through to stay.