Father, I and the team all worked hard and with the wood thrown in
we all together did not make two dollars a day.
As father had a small job in the building of the railroad and some of the
time I was with him, I will describe as well as I can, how the railroad
was built. They first graded the road-bed and made it level, then took
timbers as long as the trees would make them, hewed them on each side and
flattened them down to about a foot in thickness, then laid them on
blocks which were placed in the bed of the road. They were laid
lengthwise of the road, far enough apart so that they would be directly
under the wheels of the cars, and the ground graded up around them. In
this manner they continued until the road-bed was finished.
The next thing was to get out the ties. These were made from logs nine
feet long, which were split open through the heart, then quartered and
split from the heart to the center of the back, until the pieces were
about six or seven inches through on the back. Then the backs of the ties
were hewed flat, making them about three square, when they were ready to
be used on the road.
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