Today we actually got out into Sacramento for some touring. We’ve spent 3 days out of the 5 we’ve been here in RV maintenance. It was all maintenance that we chose to do but it still took time. The 4th day we did errands. The 5th day we spent in doing taxes. I did ours while Gary did his father’s estate taxes. That leaves only my brother’s trust taxes. We’re getting close. Close, but no cee-gar.
But, it’s time to have some fun and we’ve heard about the Railroad Museum in Sacramento so often that we put it first on our list of things to see and do here. But our day began with the usual Sunday breakfast and then Tom and Cathy called. What a nice surprise. We caught up with all their doings and told them of ours. Tom is going on a 10-day bike ride which begins around Glacier NP right about the time we will be there. What fun it would be to meet up with him in Montana and hike through the park. We’ll miss Cathy tho.
We got to the Museum about 11:00, watched the movie and then went out for a tour led by a docent. The movie did not add anything to our museum experience but the docent was very good. He not only covered the history but also had quite a lot of facts and figures and stories to make our visit more memorable. We were extremely impressed with the first room in the museum where the building of the railroad through the Sierra Nevada Mountains was explained.
What a marvelous feat of surveying, engineering and just grueling work. The surveyors found themselves on precarious perches trying to get their bearings and a straight sight line through the Sierras which are rugged, craggy, completely treed and made out of granite. Then, once the surveyor got to his perch, someone had to struggle to get his equipment up to him. I know what it is like hiking over rocks and boulders but I’m always following where others have gone. These guys were some of the first. Here you can see a survey crew getting equipment up to the top to take their bearings and measurements.
Once the survey was made, now it was time to punch this railroad through. All the equipment had to come around South America from the East Coast to the West Coast and then overland to Sacramento. But, now who’s going to do this work? 4000 men were needed in the beginning with more needed later. Hmmm. Well, we’ve got the Irish and the Chinese, both of whom landed in America when famine, poverty and overpopulation hit their own countries. Because of prejudice, the Irish were hired first but the wages were low, the work was hard and the railroad company found it difficult to hold onto 800 workers at a time. Finally, when the Irish went on strike, the Chinese were recruited but, fearing competition, the Irish came back to work, but not until after 50 Chinese were hired as a test - which they aced. They were known for their skill, reliability and perseverance and soon Central Pacific was scouring CA for more Chinese to work on the railroad. At one point the Chinese comprised 80% of the workforce.
‘Wherever we put them, we found them good, and they worked themselves into our favor to such an extent that if we found we were in a hurry for a job of work, it was better to put Chinese on at once.’ —Charles Crocker
When a job needed to be done fast, the Chinese were put on it immediately. When a group of Irish stone masons struck for higher wages, the foreman hired the Chinese reasoning that they had built the Great Wall of China. This used to be a slope but with hand tools and dynamite the workers have leveled it for the train.
Interestingly, their diet, which consisted of vegetables, dried fruit, rice and seafood with chicken and pork reserved for weekends kept them healthy and prevented the dysentery which ravaged the other work crews. Instead of water, they drank tea which had been boiled. When the job was done, some went to work for the railroad but, when they returned to their cities, they faced the same discrimination that they had faced when they left to work on the railroad.
The Museum did a good job of not covering up the ugly parts of building the railroad. Not only did they recount instances of discrimination against the Chinese but they also were forthright in discussing the financing of the railroad, the kickbacks, the bribes, the price gouging etc. It wasn’t all pretty.
I was fascinated by the tunnels that were drilled through the Sierra Nevadas in the Donner Pass section. Holes were hand drilled and sticks of dynamite were carefully placed. But it was extremely time-consuming and hard labor. Then there were the ‘snow sheds’ designed to protect the tracks from snow pile-ups during the winter. There is a lot of snow in the Sierras. The winter of 1866 - 67 was the worst on record with the snowpack averaging 18’. There were 44 snowstorms with the smallest bringing 1/4” of snow but the largest lasted 2 weeks and dropped at least 6’ of snow. The total snowfall that winter was 40’. The snow was too much for the snow plows placed on the fronts of engines and soon workers with shovels were trying to keep up. Yet, the snow was so heavy and blinding that entire crews were lost in the blizzards and their bodies not found until spring. ‘Snow sheds’ were the answer and they needed to cover 37 miles of track during a 40 mile stretch of rails. It took 3 years to cover this much but it did the job and trains lost only 4 days due to snow during the following winter.
Here’s a neat map showing how much of the railroad over the Sierras was covered in snowsheds which is the red on this map. (Black is where the railroad is uncovered and the brown is the tunnels dug through Donner Pass in the mountains.) Most of the sheds have been removed now and replaced with bigger engines and better plows. The snow still comes but the tools for coping with it have changed.
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