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The Klickitat County Agriculturist, Goldendale, WA., October 5, 1907, page 16

WHAT THE NORTH BANK ROAD IS DOING

It is expected that the North Bank Road will be completed as far as Lyle by October 15, and that passenger trains will be put on to connect with the boat line at that place as soon as the rails are laid. This is the opinion of W.A. Zimmerman, agent for the North Bank and regulator line at The Dalles. Mr. Zimmerman said that tract laying has proceeded close to The Dalles, and was being pushed with a great force. There are still some rock cuts to be made the other side of Lyle, but that will not delay the work, as the track will be laid around bad places on the old grade, and used as a temporary track. Fourteen crews are now engaged in running construction trains between Cliffs and Pasco, although no regular freight schedule is yet maintained. The road is still being ballasted as far as the rails are laid, and is ready for business.
Track laying will be started at Vancouver the first of the month and the grade is finished as far as Cape Horn, so that trains will be run out of Vancouver as fast as the tract is laid. The road will be a double tracked at once as fast as the track is laid. The road will be double tracked that once as far as the Cape Horn tunnel, and until a road is completed between Lyle and the big tunnel, transfers between these points will be made by boat. It is the intention of making their running time two hours between the station opposite The Dalles and Portland, in which case the road will get many passengers from the Oregon side. While the O.R. & R. is improving its road a great deal, and will be able to reduce its running time, yet the North Bank will have a much straighter track and will be able to make better time, in the opinion of railroad men, as the road has been built with that end in view from the start.
But whether the road is finished November 15 or May 1, no one who has had an opportunity to make a close inspection of the engineering problems which have been accomplished will accuse either contractors or engineers of loafing on the job, and the completeness and thoroughness of the work is the admiration of the initiated and the novice as well. In fact is probably the only railroad that has been built in this country on which the grade will be absolutely complete when a train schedule is put into operation over it and which will allow a speed of 60 miles an hour from the start, if its management sees fit to run trains at that rate, and they say they will.
Running through Lyle is a two mile stretch that will require considerable work in addition to a bridge which is being built over the Klickitat River. A mile below this is one of the most expensive bits of construction on the line. Here in a distance of a mile are four tunnels. They have cost the new road $300,000, exclusive of the track laying, and are not finished yet, although trains could be running through three of them if necessary. At the west end of the forth a steam scraper is at work removing thousands of cubic yards of sand that for many months baffled the engineers and resulted in the death of one man and seriously injured four more. The configuration of the ground is of such a nature that steam shovels cannot be used, owing to the fact that the sand crowds down on the shovel and chokes it and is now being removed by scraping off the top and going down to grade gradually. Workmen are at present concreting this series of tunnels.
All tunnels on the new road will be concreted with the exception of the one at Cape Horn, which is over 4000 feet long - the longest on the road, the rock in it being of a nature that is considered safe without the use of concrete. The tunnels are 16 feet wide by 24 feet high and when finished will be faced with substantial portals. At the east approach to this series of terminals is the longest trestle on the road - one hundred feet over a mile - and said by contractors to have been built to stand a speed strain of 60 miles an hour.
Apposite Memaloose Island is to be found an uncompleted section of grade through which runs a culvert 12 feet in diameter. It is the outlet for a creek which is expected to use for fluming lumber down from a timber belt back from the river. Like all the undercrossings and culverts along the new road, it is built of solid concrete and is one of the permit pieces of work, not usually put in on the first construction of a railroad.
Directly below this, considerable rock work remains to be completed, one section of which is still to be blasted out, which will require several months of work. It is located near what will be one of the most spectacular points on the road, huge rocks rearing themselves alongside the grade toward the river, affording a sight similar to the Pillars of Hercules and consisting of four instead of two great masses of stone, apparently up-ended. Below this is a long fill, the piles for which is evident that there is still much work.
Approaching Bingen, the grade is completed. The mountain of rock opposite Mosier, which was blown into the river last winter, has received additional attention since, having been cut away many feet back from the grade to prevent ice formations from dropping on it, and presents the appearance of a huge wall of hundreds of feet in height, which has been gone over by a stone cutter with a gigantic cutting tool. Along there is said by the chief engineer is to be the best finished piece of granite on the whole line of the new road.
Below this the grade is completed to the White Salmon river. The bridge of the former remains, however it to be built. Work was commenced on it early last spring, but high water in the Columbia flooded the excavations for the abutments, and it has not lowered sufficiently to allow operations to be resumed.
From Underwood to Drano, a distance of seven miles, work is being pushed rapidly, but there are a number of uncompleted pieces of grade in addition to work on the four tunnels. The tunnels are bored, and are now being concreted, and all are in about the same stage of completion as those situated on the upper end of the division near Lyle. At Drano a trestle nearly a mile in length is yet to be finished. A bridge over the Little White Salmon river must also would be built on this section. Seven miles above Stevenson the bridge over Wind river is also one of the pieces of construction that remains unfinished. It is not believed by contractors that this long stretch of uncompleted grade from Lyle to Cape Horn can be finished sufficiently to allow trains to be run over it by November first.
The unusual width of the grade of the new road has been the cause of much speculation by railroad men and others who have wondered why so much expense was being entailed for a single track road when a narrower road would have answered the purpose. This is now explained by the fact that it was the original intention to double track the road except on bridges and in tunnels. This order was afterward modified to double-track 20 miles out of Kennewick and from Vancouver to the west end of the Cape Horn tunnel which will be done as soon as the road is in operation. The great expense at which the railroad has been built from Kennewick to Portland estimated at $10,000,000, is said to be justified when it is taken into consideration that the Portland & Seattle will virtually be the outlet to Portland of both the Northern Pacific and Great Northern for all through freight in addition to picking up a big local business from the grain country of eastern Washington and points along the line.