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It was a small place, consisting of a single long narrow galvanized iron shed, and placed parallel to the river. In front of the shed was a tiny wharf, and behind it were stacks and stacks of tree trunks cut in short lengths and built as if for seasoning. Decauville tramways radiated from the shed, and the men were running in timber in the trucks.
The props were swung out in bundles by the Girondin's crew, lowered on to the Decauville trucks, and pushed by the depot men back through the shed, the empty trucks being returned by another road, and brought by means of the turn-tables to the starting point. The young manager watched the operations and took a tally of the props.
The success of the Decauville railway has been so rapid and so great that many inventors have entered the same field, but they have almost all formed the idea of constructing the portable track with detachable sleepers. There are thus, at present, two systems of portable tracks: those in which the sleepers are capable of being detached, and those in which they are not so capable.
M. Decauville has adopted the latter system, because it offers sufficient strength, while the lines are lighter and less cumbersome. Where at first he used flat iron sleepers, he now fits his lines with dished steel sleepers, in accordance with Figs. 1 and 2.
After a while they became very tired and were unable to continue. As a considerable quantity of material was requisite to keep the trenches in repair, large carrying parties were necessary. These could have been to a large extent obviated had light Decauville railways been constructed, such as the Germans were discovered later to have been using.
In special cases, M. Decauville provides also railroads with projecting sleepers, whether of flat steel beaten out and rounded, or of channel iron; but the sleeper and the rail are always inseparable, so as not to lessen the strength, and also to facilitate the laying of the line.
These permanent narrow gauge lines, the laying of which demands the service of engineers, and the maintenance of which entails considerable expense, suggested to M. Decauville, Aîne, farmer and distiller at Petit-Bourg, near Paris, the idea of forming a system of railways composed entirely of metal, and capable of being readily laid.
Late in the afternoon, back of the three hills that face Hill No. 223, the "All America" Division "cut" the Decauville Railroad that supplied a salient to the north that the Germans were striving desperately to hold.
If the engineers had had to attack the enormous chain of the Kuen Lun, Nan Chan, Amie, Gangar Oola, which forms the frontier of Tibet, the obstacles would have been such that it would have taken a century to surmount them. But on a flat, sandy plain the railway could be rapidly pushed on up to Lan Tcheou, like a long Decauville of three thousand kilometres.
The expedition of the Ogowe in October, 1880, that of the Upper Congo in November, 1881, and the Congo mission under Savorgnan de Brazza, have all made use of the Decauville narrow-gauge railway system.
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