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Two were west of the Alleghanies, and not one was 140 miles long. For a while the cars ran on "strap rails" made of wooden beams or stringers laid on stone blocks and protected on the top surface, where the car wheel rested, by long strips or straps of iron spiked on.

He forgot his blistered heel and worked with prodigious energy and interest, receiving with dogged silent disdain the humorous sallies of the Desert Rat, to whom the other's sudden industry was a source of infinite amusement. The Desert Rat and the Indian were busy with pans and prospector's picks gouging out "stringers" and crevices and picking up scattered pieces of "jewelry" rock.

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.

"Well, I'm glad you've found yourself," said the Steam. "To tell the truth, I was a little tired of talking to all those ribs and stringers. Here's Quarantine. After that we'll go to our wharf and clean up a little, and next month we'll do it all over again."

Passenger coaches were patterned after the old stage coach, the track iron straps on wooden stringers, yet here he was outlining what today is an accomplished fact. The Union Pacific and its connections. Carver spent the best years of his life and what was in those days an ample fortune in endeavoring to further his project.

This was dressed, then sawed down the middle, so as to make the two runners. Through each runner six holes were bored from the top, each pair of holes about two inches apart. Into the holes were driven wooden pegs to hold the three benches. The pegs were long enough to go through the two stringers that ran in line with the runners. Over this the frame was laid.

Large, long trees were cut for stringers, and hewn square, posts were made to prop up the stringers, though the stringers would have held any weight. Then small trees were cut and flattened on two sides, for the road-bed, holes bored in them and pegs made to drive through them into the stringers. A lot of cavalry soldiers never worked as those men did.

In Squier's day the remains of others were to be seen, but I could find no evidences of them. There was probably a double row of these columns to support the stringers and tiebeams of the roof. Apparently one end of a tiebeam rested on the circular column and the other end was embedded in the main wall. The holes where the tiebeams entered the wall have stone lintels.

It was only when they entered they saw signs of man's work in the massive beams and stringers that braced the structure. These were presently lost in the gloom and Foster stumbled among the ties. Shingle ballast rolled under his feet; where he found a tie to step on it was generally by stubbing his toe, and once or twice he struck the side of the shed.

They had pried a rail above the stringers when they heard the pursuing locomotive, and saw it rounding a curve half a mile away. They scrambled into their cars in a hurry, leaving the rail bent but not removed. Captain Fuller saw the bent rail, but he had also seen the game, and he allowed his engine to be driven over it under a full head of steam.