Innovation was alive and well in the 19th century as our forefathers did the impossible engineering for trains

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Rizal Philippines
May 28, 2019

Impossible Engineering

The Discovery Channel featured impossible train engineering mostly done in the late 1800 and early 1900.  Truly man has the dominion over the earth as  mandated in Genesis 1:28. Engineers did almost the  impossible in building trains to ease travel. The obstacles overcame were tall and unforgiving mountains and elevations, water (swamps rivers)  lakes, oceans/seas. And the achievements were truly remarkable.

Some of those mentioned were:

1.  Australian railway line that connected the minesites to Sydney. The steep mountain side were manually chipped away by crowbars (the bars were hammered one by one).  In order to overcome the steep mountain side, the train reversed to lessen the gradient

2.  Trains can only go up to maximum of 7% grade/incline.   To go beyond this, as they did in UK they employed rack and pinion railway system.  The train rollers were the pinion (toothed) and the rail were pinion.  However some trains due to their weight fell on their sides.  Solution, the rack were enclosed in cribs.

3.  In Poland, to connect a city, there was train that was pulled by system of cables run by water turbines to go through waterways and inclines.  It was an ingenious method and the rail system can pull loads up to 40 tons.

4. There was railway system that was built on swampland. However the rail bed continued to sink. The solution a drain for the swampland.

5. A train system in Switzerland employed a round about of 70 meters to change incline gradually across  valleys up to the mountain

6.  Most of train system in Italy and Switzerland employed tunneling manual (not the automatic boring system we see now..  In an Italian island the railway system connected the 12 villages and to build the rail, materials have to be delivered by helicopter.

7.  An ingenious and constant watch over erosion and landslide has to be done.   Monitors have to be established built, as well as strong slope protection:  gabion etc to prevent the landslide from eating, destroying the railways

8.  In Sierra Nevada, and elsewhere a deep snow machine was invented to prevent deep snow from turning into ice that stranded many passenters.

9.  Some of  the other spectacular rail were:

      1.  The one in Istanbul built underwater.  Made of concrete tubes buried underwater beneath 60 meters of water and interlocked by steel and rubber gasket.  A system of monitoring and flood control was installed to prevent flooding and catastrophe from earthquake.

    2. The two km train system between India and Sri Lanka.  It was built by  a British Engineer. At the middle was a drawbridge that enabled ships to pass.  The bridge used minimual counterweight (using the  principle of rocking chair) and can be operated by hand

   3. The bridge in UK that employed multi design to be robust and  has run for more than 150 years:  use suspension system, an arch,and vertical support. It was tall enough to enable Naval ships to pass through the channel.