I watched a new show on AMC last night after Walking Dead called Hell on Wheels. It was about a Souther ex solder who got a job working for the railroad in the 1860s. They had a Surveyor and his wife. He did not last long before the Injuns killed him. The previews for next week showed his wife using a transit, she was holding the level rod in the first show. Anybody else see it?
Nope. Sounds like it took some tough women to survey the Indian country, or the tale is a tall one.
jud
pure fiction all the way but it was entertaining
Yeah, I also caught that. It seems like it may be a good show. I don't miss an episode of Walking Dead. My only conflict is that it airs during the same time as Homefront on Showtime which is also turning out to be very good. The one thing I notices in Hell on Wheels is how he fired the first engineer for making the train track straight. The railroad was being subsidized by the government "teet" so he wanted it to run in long sweeping curves as to increase the length of the project.
Somehow I don't think that part about the engineer being fired for designing the tracks in a straight line was pure fiction.
Seems like a pretty good show. Walking Dead is still awesome though.
For anyone that saw it last night, a big thumbs up goes to Glen.;-)
Yeah, Glen is the luckiest guy in the Zombie Apocalypse.;-)
The transcontinental railroads that were subsidized by the government were full of corruption. Every one of them eventually filed for bankruptcy. The only railroad to run to the Pacific was the only one that didn't receive any government subsidy, the Great Northern Railroad.
I recorded it but haven't watched it yet. It sounds as if the fired surveyor is based on Peter Dey and the change from the nearly direct route from Omaha to the Elkhorn river in favor of the curve or ox bow line down the Mud creek valley nearly to Bellevue and then northwest following West Papillion creek to a point of convergence with the original line between four and five miles from the place of crossing the Elkhorn.
If so, he wasn't fired. He quit.
Here's an excerpt from the Thirty-Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Railroad Commissioners – State of Iowa (1911):
In 1863 he [Dey] began work with the Union Pacific Railroad Company having charge of the surveys between Omaha and the Salt Lake Valley and also of the construction of the first one hundred miles west of Omaha. In November, 1863, he went with the officers of the road and government directors to see the President of the United States presenting a map on the showing of which Mr. Lincoln designated the Congressional Section in which Omaha was located, as the initial point of the Union Pacific Railroad. While employed on this work Mr. Dey raised the question on the Credit Moblier [sic] Contract, suggesting that this was a violation of a trust and a diversion of the advances made by the general government without due consideration. The history of this may be found in the Credit Moblier [sic] Report of the Wilson Committee to Congress published in 1873.
In connection with his work on the Union Pacific Railroad, Mr. Dey located and recommended a line from Omaha almost due west to Elkhorn but through the influence of some of the officers of the company the line was changed to add nine miles to a distance of thirteen. The Engineering News of August 31, 1911, in telling of this change says, "The claim was made that this would eliminate heavy work and heavy grades, but many saw other reasons for the change and it was violently opposed by both Omaha and Council Bluffs for the fear that the design was to make Bellevue the real terminal. As a matter of fact nothing was gained from an engineering point of view by the proposed change. The case was carried to the Government which was to issue bonds at several thousand dollars per mile of road completed and after a long contest and many reports it was ordered that the change should not be made unless the Omaha and Elkhorn grades were eliminated. General Dodge is authority for the statement that 'by the change and addition of nine miles they made no reductions in the original grades or in tonnage hauled in a train on the new line, over the old line if it had been built.'
"The company paid no attention to the Government order or to the recommendations of its engineer, and went ahead on the changed line The Government commissioners accepted the line thus built and bonds were issued on it. The decision to make the change and the letting of the contracts for a much larger sum than that necessary to actually construct the road, to an inside ring of the stockholders of the company (the Credit Moblier [sic]) caused Mr Dey to tender his resignation.
In the improvement work done on the Union Pacific Railway since 1900, a part was the cutoff west of Omaha, practically a relocation on the original line recommended by Mr. Dey in 1864.” In his History of Iowa, Volume 4, B. F. Gue, in telling of this investigation in connection with Mr. Dey, quotes from Scribners Monthly of March, 1874, as follows:
"When his estimate was made to the Directors, it was returned to him with orders to retouch it with higher colors, to put in embankments on paper where none existed on earth, to make the old embankments heavier, to increase the expense generally, and he was requested to send in his estimate that it would cost $50,000 per mile. When Mr Dey was informed that this part of the road was let at $50,000 per mile which he knew could be done for $30,000, this difference amounting to $5,000,000 on the two hundred and forty six miles, he resigned his position as Chief Engineer in a noble letter to the President of the road. He closed that letter with this statement: ‘My views of the Pacific Railroad are perhaps peculiar. I look upon its managers as trustees of the bounty of Congress. You are doubtless uninformed how disproportionate the amount to be paid is to the work contracted for. I need not expatiate on the sincerity of my course when you reflect upon the fact that I have resigned the best position in my profession this country has offered to any man.'"
He resigned his office as Chief Engineer of the Union Pacific Railroad to take effect on the 30th day of December 1864 and returned to Iowa City. From this time until 1869 he was engaged in making some surveys for a north and south road.
Walking Dead also had a survey reference. Someone pulled out the ol "county survey maps" in order to search for the missing girl about ten minutes into the episode.
I watched the show earlier this evening. The surveyor was named Robert Bell. Interestingly enough, there was a surveyor named Robert Bell but he doesn't appear to have been associated with the so-called Transcontinental Railroad.