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Updated: May 16, 2025
When the sightseers made their way out of the cañon material trains working from both ends of the break were shoving their loaded flats noisily up to the ballasting crews and the water was echoing the clang of the spike mauls, the thud of tamping-irons, the clash of picks, the splash of tumbling stone, and the ceaseless roll of shovels. Foot by foot, length by length, the gap was shortened.
After ballasting his ship with silver from the rich Potosi mines, and rifling even the churches, he hastened onward in pursuit of a richly laden galleon nicknamed Cacafuego a name discreetly translated Spitfire, but which, to repeat a joke that greatly amused Drake's men at the time, it was proposed to change to Spitsilver, for when overtaken and captured the vessel yielded 26 tons of silver, 13 chests of pieces of eight, and gold and jewels sufficient to swell the booty to half a million pounds sterling.
Surely, it was argued, it would be folly to carry worthless ballast when good mealies, which were in any case badly needed in the country, would serve the purpose of ballasting equally well and would, of course, show a very large profit. A contract for mealies was therefore entered into. When the inquiry was instituted in the Volksraad certain awkward facts came to light, and it devolved upon Mr.
I can only hope, and trust them to the protection of a merciful Providence. The only sign of a holiday on board to-night is the usual "splicing of the main-brace" Anglicè, giving Jack an extra allowance of grog. I shall begin to look for a norther in about twenty-four hours. We commenced caulking our leaky decks to-day, and despatched the launch to assist in ballasting the barque.
Speedy construction was considered of the first importance and then the ballasting could be done much cheaper after the track was down. To a very great extent temporary trestles of timber were used, to be replaced later by more permanent culverts of stone. In some places where the piles were thus replaced by masonry, it was necessary to tear out the stone and put in piles again.
Even the laborers left their tasks and started down the rough surface of the new embankment toward the place, a quarter-of-a-mile away, where the train would stop at the end of the crude ballasting. Lorey sat there on his stump, apparently impassive, watching all this flurry with resentful, discontented eyes.
The first through train reached Omaha May 6th, arriving in two sections and bringing about five hundred passengers. This board duly reported in October, 1869, that the line was all right, but that a million and a half could be spent to advantage in ballasting, terminal facilities, depots, equipment, etc.
Once I got a job with a roustabout gang ballasting a ship, but the wages were only two shillings a day; besides, the job did not last. The problem for me to solve was, how to get away to East London. Once there I would be with my family. Every morning I would go to Sims's shop to see if he had succeeded in getting me anything to do.
And what a magnificent railway it was, and what splendid rolling stock they had! Steel sleepers, big heavy rails, low gradients, excellent cuts and bridge work; cuttings through rock smoothed as if by sandpaper and crevices filled with concrete. Fine concrete gutters along the curves, such ballasting as one sees on the North-Western Railway. Nothing cheap or flimsy about the culverts.
And out there before his door they had driven the last spike at the very edge of the valley that cut the landscape. There was the end of his contract. Eastward the line awaited only the final ballasting. Westward that was different. The great river chasm that had ended his task was baffling O'Connor, the bridge contractor.
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