An English import, the American railway diverged sharply from English ideals. Environment proved stronger than genetics — settled and industrializing England constrained railway builders to design the most efficient routes possible, whereas their counterparts in unsettled and impecunious America disregarded gradient and circuity on pain of not completing lines at all.
As the American era of expansion ended, savvy operating men such as Edward H. Harriman plucked from the rubble the best routes, realigning them to increase operating efficiency. This map, done in the style of Harriman’s time, illustrates the ultimate result of his cost-no-object, nature-be-damned methodology: the Lucin Cutoff, which strode across the Great Salt Lake on a trestle to eliminate 43.77 miles, 3,919 degrees of curvature, and 1,515 feet of climb. Bypassed was the famous Golden Spike site at Promontory. Grades were reduced to a negligible 0.4 percent. The last spike was driven November 15, 1903, finishing a new wonder of the railway world.
Most of the easy realignment work is done; further opportunities for betterments are few. (BNSF Railway’s low-grade second track through New Mexico’s Abo Canyon, completed in 2011, is one of the few exceptions.)
And what of England? Its railways still mostly use their superior first alignments, whereas few American railways retain anything resembling the original. Some, in fact, are, in places, on their fourth!
Railroads included in this map:
Southern Pacific; Union Pacific
