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Updated: May 11, 2025
Merritt, with the remaining brigades of his division, holding fast at Baltimore crossroads to await events. After Gregg and Custer had gone, it was discovered that the railroad bridge over the Pamunkey, near the White House, had been destroyed but partially the cross-ties and stringers being burned in places only and that it was practicable to repair it sufficiently to carry us over.
He pressed the engine and crew into service, and again took up the pursuit of the fleeing raiders. Andrews and his men, in the meantime, had stopped and loaded their box cars with old cross-ties and discarded rails These they began to throw out of the rear end of their hindmost car as a measure of safety.
The rails had been heated, and wound about trees and stumps. The cross-ties were burned to heat the rails. The cars had been destroyed by fire, and their warped ironwork thrown into ditches. The engines lay in scrap-heaps at the bottoms of ravines and rivers. The bridges were gone. Out of the chaos to which the structure had been resolved, there was nothing left but the road-bed.
When the heavy engine struck the up-grade, the rails had spread, the wheels had gone down on the cross-ties, and the whole train was derailed. I saw it with a sickening realization of the fact. Marion took the workman's torch and went over the short piece of track on which the thing had happened. All the evidences of the accident were within a short distance.
"Let us have some of that kindling-wood for the furnace," shouted Andrews to the men in the baggage car. The men began to pitch wood from the door of the car into the tender, and George transferred some of it to the furnace. "That's better," cried the engineer. "We need wood more than we need a kingdom!" "Throw out some of those cross-ties," thundered the leader.
Now Douglas fir, southern pine and other woods are being used largely throughout the Middle Western and Eastern States. The supply of white oak ties is small and the prices are high. Some years ago, when white oak was abundant, the railroads that now are using other cross-ties would not have even considered such material for use in their roadbeds.
Merritt, with the remaining brigades of his division, holding fast at Baltimore crossroads to await events. After Gregg and Custer had gone, it was discovered that the railroad bridge over the Pamunkey, near the White House, had been destroyed but partially the cross-ties and stringers being burned in places only and that it was practicable to repair it sufficiently to carry us over.
Clay was bruised considerably, and Green says he knows he plowed up fifty yards of gravel with his face before he stopped and he looked it. They both went home on 201." Lidgerwood was examining the cross-ties, which were cut and scarred by the flanges of many derailed wheels. "You have no notion of what did it?" he queried, turning abruptly upon McCloskey.
This was a year before the first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with heavy straps of iron.
The rails were afterwards deposited in the baggage car occupied by the men, as were also some wooden cross-ties which were found near the road-bed. "All this may be a waste of time," said Andrews. "We shall probably be in Chattanooga before any one has a chance to chase us." "Yet I have a presentiment that we shall be chased," cried Macgreggor. "I believe there will be a hot pursuit."
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