“The Railway General” was episode 5 of the 1974 CBC tv mini-series, The National Dream, about the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway, at that time the most technically difficult large railway in the world. The “General” in question was Cornelius Van Horne, an American who was hired by the CPR to build the railway.
He built the railway by a combination of detailed planning, expertise in all things Railway, and dogged determination. The section across the Prairies was mainly built in one summer, telescoping out from Winnipeg Manitoba. In 1882 the CPR laid 417 miles of rail, stretching from Winnipeg to Brandon to Regina (including passing not too far from where I’m posting), Moose Jaw and ending near Calgary for the winter - all manual labour. In the next year, they set a record for track laid in one day by manual labour: 6.83 miles, a record never broken.
The Lookout Mountain Incline Railway, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, is an “inclined plane funicular railway” which runs from the city of Chattanooga, up to the top of Lookout Mountain. The railway, which uses trolley-like self-powered cars, is approximately one mile in length, and has a maximum grade of 72.7%, making it one of the steepest operating passenger railways in the world.
Near the end of the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, according to Stephen Ambrose in his much-criticized but best-selling 2000 account Nothing Like It In The World, the railway work crews were so skilled they could lay track at the pace of a man walking along the line.
Two weeks before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah on 10 May 2869, on 28 Apr 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad crew set a record by laying ten miles of track in one day. They beat the previous record of 7.5 miles set by the Union Pacific Railroad.
Okay guys, finally… Repeating:
Two weeks before the Transcontinental Railroad was completed at Promontory, Utah on 10 May 2869, on 28 Apr 1869 the Central Pacific Railroad crew set a record by laying ten miles of track in one day. They beat the previous record of 7.5 miles set by the Union Pacific Railroad.
More info:
The Union Pacific’s previous record was set in a day starting at 3AM and ending just before midnight. When Charles Crocker claimed that his Central Pacific crew could lay ten miles in a day, the Union Pacific and other people scoffed at such a ridiculous boast. To beat the record, back in 1869, the Central Pacific had to pre-position materials totaling more than 4.4 million pounds, according to a 1928 article in the Southern Pacific Bulletin.
The length of measurement called the furlong originated in England in about the 9th century AD. It was the length of the furrow in one acre of a plowed field, or 660 feet. In 1592, Parliament set about determining the length of the mile and decided that each mile should be made up of eight furlongs. Thus, the mile is 5,280 feet.
An acre is a unit of land area measurement in the Imperial system. It’s formally defined as being one chain (66 feet) by one furlong (660 feet), or 43,560 square feet.
In the metric system, the comparable unit is the hectare, which is defined as being 100 meters by 100 meters (10,000 square meters). An acre is roughly 40.5% of the size of a hectare, and a hectare contains roughly 2.47 acres.
10 furlongs, 1¼ miles, 2,012 m — is the length of the Kentucky Derby
9½ furlongs, 1 3⁄16 miles (1.1875 miles), 1,911 m — is the length of the Preakness Stakes
12 furlongs, 1½ miles, 2,414 m — is the length of the Belmont Stakes
The Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. The money to build this racetrack was initially raised by Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., grandson of William Clark of the Lewis and Clark expedition,
Epsom Downs in England is one of the oldest racecourses anywhere in the world. Races from 1661 are documented, and were probably held even earlier. This racetrack was the origin of the word “derby”, borrowed to describe numerous sporting events; originally, however, it was only used to refer to The Derby, the wealthiest race in the UK.
The USS Kentucky and USS Kearsarge were sister ships, and so similar in appearance that the battleships’ sailors sometimes got on the wrong ship when they were moored near each other.
American author James Fenimore Cooper wrote a series of five novels, collectively known as the Leatherstocking Tales, which featured Nathaniel “Natty” Bumppo, an Anglo-American explorer who was raised by Native Americans, and his companion, a Mohican chief named Chingachgook. Bumppo goes by a number of nicknames in the books, including “Deerslayer,” “Pathfinder,” and “Hawkeye.”
The five novels are The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie.
The real name of Hawkeye in both the movie and TV series MAS*H was Benjamin Franklin Pierce. In the series, Hawkeye says he got the nickname from his father, who read one of the books in the Leatherstocking series, and claims it’s the only book his father read. But his father is also a doctor, so there’s a bit of a continuity issue there.
Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series was played by Alan Alda, son of Robert Alda, who was the original-cast Sky Masterson on Broadway in Guys and Dolls. Robert Alda appeared on the episodes “The Consultant” and “Lend a Hand”, as a surgeon although not as Hawkeye’s father. In the latter, his son Antony (Alan’s half-brother) also appeared.
In play: The Connecticut River is the longest river in New England. It starts in northern New Hampshire, less than a mile from the border of Canada at Fourth Connecticut Lake in Pittsburg and flows southward to Long Island Sound through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. The Connecticut River defines the state border between New Hampshire and Vermont, and it produces 70% of Long Island Sound’s fresh water. The two main cities built along the river are Springfield, Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut.
Brattleboro, Vermont, my wife’s hometown, is in Windham County and is on the Connecticut River. You can see New Hampshire easily from her parents’ backyard. Brattleboro, named after prominent Massachusetts statesman and landowner William Brattle Jr. (who never visited the area, as far as is known) is the only town of its name in the entire world.