Horatio Allen undoubtedly attended the celebration at Charleston that greeted the formal opening of the line to Hamburg on October 2, 1833. But it is unlikely that the fanfare and the speeches gave this practical engineer any notion that the road was actually completed.
Allen had made the discovery all railroad builders make. A railroad is never "finished." Like a living thing it continues to grow, to change, to develop needs that must be met from day to day.
What kind of railroad structure had this young engineer devised to link the South Carolina seacoast with the interior and begin an era in long-distance transportation?
Perhaps the clearest picture of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company track may be gained by imagining a timber bridge 136 miles long. At some places it rested on the earth or in slight excavations, but for the most part it ran five or six feet above the surface. Crossing gullies and ravines the track rose as much as 25 feet from the ground.
Where the road followed the ground surface, or was excavated slightly below it, a kind of "sleeper" construction resembling present-day track was possible. In firm clay or gravel, the contractors' workmen set the 10-foot-long, 10 x 12 inch "sleepers" (roughly corresponding to today's cross ties but spaced 6 feet apart) directly on the ground and packed earth around them as ballast. Timber rails 6 x 10 inches in cross section and at least 19 feet long were secured by cutting three-inch deep grooves in the cross timbers, placing the rails in the grooves and wedging them into place. Approximately five miles of the line involved this type of construction.
More often, the softness of the surface made it advisable to support the cross timbers or "sleepers" on 9 x 9 inch foundation timbers running parallel to the rails and almost directly beneath them. In that case the builders used 6 x 9 inch cross timbers only 9 feet long. Some 28 miles of the railroad was built to this general plan, including the 3,800-foot inclined plane at Aiken where the foundation timbers were 12 x 12 inches in cross section. (The inclined plane was a device for overcoming steep grade by means of stationary engines and heavy ropes. )
But the greater part of the road (almost 100 miles) Allen built with the piling construction he had tested so thoroughly in the early track-laying experiments near Charleston. It was used wherever the line ran above ground or where the soil at the surface was too loose to permit either kind of sleeper construction.
Each 6 x 9 inch cross timber was supported by a pair of heavy posts, 10 or 15 inches in diameter and six feet apart. Using a pile driver with a half-ton weight and a fall of 20 feet, workmen drove the huge piles inch by inch into the ground until they were imbedded to a depth of 4 to 25 feet depending on the softness of the soil. Tops were cut off level at a height that would maintain the correct elevation of the road and cross timbers secured to the posts. Rails were placed and wedged as earlier described.
Pilings more than seven feet high had a 4 x 5 inch timber nailed across each pair as a brace. At 10 feet or more in height, two braces were introduced in the shape of an "X." Some piling above 16 feet high was strengthened by outside braces.
On five miles of the line, where the road rose more than 12 feet above the surface and the soil conditions proved particularly bad, Allen had to modify the pile construction into trestle or "truss work."
Three deeply driven piles supported a 12 x 12 inch foundation timber. On it four posts 8 x 10 inches in cross section were set in an inverted 'W" to support the 10 x 12 cross timber on which the wooden rails were fastened. Heavier rails were used since the truss work was spaced at longer intervals than piling ( 10 to 13 feet instead of 6 1/2).
Throughout the line the wooden rails were capped with strips of iron 2 1/4 inches wide, 1/2 inch thick and 10 to 15 feet long, spiked to the tops of the rails about 1/2 of an inch from the inner edge. The extra 1/2 inch of wood was grooved away and the five-foot gauge measured between the inner edges of the iron rails.
Allen knew, and told the directors, that this kind of construction held future maintenance problems due to the decay of the timber. But so far as he could see, the company had no alternative but to use it.
This was not the only kind of railroad he knew how to build, nor even the kind he would have preferred to build. Circumstances made it the only kind of railroad he could build.
The young chief engineer used heart pine timber called "lightwood") because the countryside abounded in it-and in little else that would support a railroad. He might have avoided the use of piling altogether by excavating through ridges. and filling in valleys-slightly lowering the level of the line. But this would have almost doubled the cost, and Allen realized that the company could not afford it.
This same concern for economy and consideration for the company's limited resources kept him from using the heavier iron cap rail that, he would have preferred, iron % of an inch thick with a downward flange on the inner edge.
As constructed, the line required excavation for only about one-fifth of its length and cuts were for the most part shallow. At the time it formally opened the entire railroad contained barely 20,000 cubic yards of embankment and only one real bridge, a 400-foot timber span over the Edisto River .
Allen recommended filling in around the piling and truss work with earth as soon as the company's revenues permitted. Beginning this work during his final year with the company, Allen found as other observers were to discover later that the original timber frame work had a desirable effect. It gave added firmness to the earth embankments and considerably reduced the problem of settling. Railroad builders who came to examine the South Carolina road often marveled that so substantial a road could have been built at such moderate cost.
The chief engineer's report to the directors in May, 1834, described in detail the rail facilities already completed and under construction. It reveals that Horatio Allen had showed his usual thoroughness in fitting out the railroad as a going and growing transportation business.
Along the 136-mile line he had built 16 turnouts at intervals of 4 to 12 miles, with side tracks averaging 650 feet in length. All were equipped with water pumps and all but three with woodsheds. At the Charleston depository (freight station) Allen had ordered built pumps, woodshed, three side tracks, a revolving platform (probably an early version of the locomotive turntable) and 200 feet of cross tracks.
Revolving platforms and cross tracks had also been completed at the depositories at Summerville, Jericho and Aiken. At Hamburg the single track branched into three parallel tracks, the two outside tracks equipped with depositories for freight.
In addition to the facilities at the 16 turnouts, pumps and water tanks had been built at six other points along the line. In all, he had built 13 freight depositories.
Allen reported that he had ten other additions under contract including wells, pumps, tanks, turnouts, side tracks, revolving platforms and blacksmith and carpenter shops. He recommended that the board authorize him to have built during the summer train sheds at Branchville and Blackville, cross tracks with sheds at Hamburg and another turnout near Midway.
"The preceding six months have been of a trying character to the Road," he told the directors. "The extraordinary continuance of dry weather at the close of last summer, being followed by several months as remarkable for the quantity of rain, has presented a combination of circumstances tending thoroughly to disclose all places where the supporting structure has been wanting either in solidity of foundation or substantial workmanship.
"Under these circumstances, it is a gratifying fact that not only have all deficiencies thus brought to light been promptly made good, but the general character of the workmanship has been proved as good as under the circumstances could have been expected, and has been materially improved by the removal of many minor defects and the employment of better and more careful workmen than it was in our power to procure in adequate numbers at the time the road was under construction.
"By filling up every two years two or three feet at the more elevated portions of the Road, it is believed that the repair necessarily incident to the work will be effectually and economically executed, while the Embankments will be gradually introduced before the natural decay of the material will render them or a reconstruction indispensable."
For all his talent, Allen could not know with certainty how well he had built. Only time and use make such a judgment possible. But his recommendations to the directors show that he knew the weaknesses in the track structure, why they existed and what could be done as a remedy.
Although other railroads existed at the time the South Carolina line was planned and constructed, it was unique both in the length to which it was to be built and its conception as a common carrier operated by locomotive power alone.
To this ambitious project Horatio Allen brought a keen intelligence, an inventive mind and as much practical experience and observation of railroads as any man could have at the time.
Perhaps more important, he had the moral courage to stake his professional reputation on decisions for which there were no precedents. He had to make decisions that might follow him the rest of his professional life, within limits imposed by the terrain, the kind of construction materials available, the lack of skilled workmen and the limited finances of the company.
As Allen recalled later, in The Railroad Era: "To anyone who may happen to know what was devised and done at that early day, it is pertinent and fair to say that the engineer on whom rested the responsibility for providing the indispensable, also knew with what difficulty the capital, in that day of small capital and little confidence, had been provided by subscription to the stock of the company, and with what greater difficulty any addition to that capital could be had until success 'had attended the original sum provided. It was, therefore, an indispensable condition of every plan to be devised that its cost must come within the capital provided.
"With such determination was the condition kept in view that it was a pleasantly repeated remark, in after times, for the engineer to be introduced by a former director, as the engineer who had built and put in operation a railroad within his estimate."
From the vantage point of ten years experience with Allen's handiwork-and after a Hood in 1843 washed out portions of the embankments-President Tristram Tupper of the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company made this evaluation of the work and the man:
"Repairs were made in about 6 days after the water had so far subsided as to enable the men to reach the work. Had the superstructure been on an embankment only, it would have been months before the repairs would have admitted of the passage of an engine, The road being sufficiently supported on the piles at many points to render it safe to remain so, till the floating gang previously organized had first filled up places requiring earlier attention,
"For this mode of construction the Company is indebted to the judgment and skill of Horatio Allen, Esq" Chief Engineer, who aided the direction in planning and building a Road of the cheapest possible construction, as it was then well understood that the means could not be obtained for a more costly work, Mr, Allen was a gentleman well adapted to the business here undertaken and carried out so successfully,
"His industry, honesty and mild deportment made him the friend of all capable of appreciating these valuable traits of character, and it is believed that no other man could have more completely met the wishes of the Company,"